How to hire a COO in the UK, fractional or full time
Hiring a fractional COO in the UK takes seven steps: write the gap down, set the budget from the published day-rate band, check fractional is the right shape, shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage, interview with the six questions below, agree the day-ninety markers in writing, and contract the days and the IR35 position. Most companies go from brief to signed contract in about two weeks. To skip the reading and meet people, hire a fractional COO from the seat page.
UK day rates for the seat run £700 to £1,300. All eleven seats compared →
Fractional or full time: which COO hire you need
A fractional COO costs £700 to £1,300 a day, usually two days a week, which is £5,367 to £9,967 a month with no employer costs. A full-time COO is paid a base of £100,000 to £170,000, plus employer costs, and a retained search adds 25 to 33 per cent of first-year earnings. Fractional fits two or three days of judgement; full time fits five days of leadership.
| Route | Cost basis | Time to start | Commitment | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional | £700 to £1,300 a day; £5,367 to £9,967 a month at two days | Met within days, starting in one to three weeks | One to three days a week, usually a month's notice | Owning the COO decisions two or three days a week |
| Interim | £13,417 to £24,917 a month at 5 days | Weeks rather than months | Full time for a fixed term, typically 3 to 9 months | Cover for a departure, a transaction or a turnaround with an end date |
| Full-time search | A base of £100,000 to £170,000, plus 25 to 33 per cent of year one as the search fee | twelve to sixteen weeks of search, then three to six months of notice | Permanent and employed, five days a week | A five-day seat that is certain to be permanent |
The full-time package is set out on the COO salary page, and how a permanent search for the seat runs is on COO executive search. The difference between the three routes is set out in full on fractional versus interim versus full-time, and hiring a full-time executive covers the permanent route.
Hiring a fractional COO in seven steps
- Write the gap down. Name the two or three things a fractional COO must own in the first quarter, and how many days a week that is. List the specific decisions you want off your desk, by name. "Stop being the escalation point for client complaints" gets a better response than "help us scale operations". Below ↓
- Set the budget from the published band. UK fractional COO day rates run £700 to £1,300 in 2026. Two days a week is £5,367 to £9,967 a month, with no employer costs on top. Fractional COO cost →
- Check fractional is the right shape. A fractional COO is two or three days a week for a year or more. If the need is five days for six months, or the seat is a full-time job already, interim or permanent fits better. Below ↓
- Shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage. Read track records, not titles. The right operator has been the COO at a company of your size and stage before, and says what happened there in numbers. Browse the bench →
- Interview with the six questions. Every question asks for something that happened. An operator who has held the seat answers from memory; one who has advised from the sidelines answers in the abstract. Below ↓
- Agree the day-ninety markers in writing. Put the day-ninety outcomes in the brief before they start. A written operating rhythm that has been running for at least a month: named meetings, named owners, and at least one meeting cancelled because it was not earning its place. Below ↓
- Contract the days, the notice period and the IR35 position. Fix the days a week, a notice period of a month, who owns the output, and the IR35 determination. Then set the start date and the first ninety-day review. IR35 for fractional executives →
What the seat covers is on the fractional COO page. The rest of this page is the part that usually goes unwritten: the interview, day ninety, and when this hire is the wrong answer entirely.
Where to find a fractional COO in the UK
Four routes work, and most companies use two of them at once. Whichever finds the person, the shortlist test is the same: they have held the seat at a company of your size and stage before.
- A platform or bench with the rate on the profile. The day rate is visible before the first call, which settles the budget conversation early. The UK fractional platforms, compared.
- A search against a written brief. Somebody else runs the longlist and the first interviews and puts a shortlist in front of you. How Operator Search works.
- Your investors, accountant or lawyer. They have seen fractional COOs work at other companies and know which ones they would have back.
- Other founders. A COO who has done it at a company like yours is usually two introductions away. Ask what they would hire them for again, not whether they were good.
Six questions to ask, and what a strong answer sounds like
Every question here asks for something that happened, not something they believe. An operator who has genuinely held the seat answers from memory; one who has advised from the sidelines answers in the abstract, and the difference is audible within a minute.
1. Tell me about a founder you had to take out of a decision loop. What did you actually change, and what broke first?
Listen for: A strong answer names the mechanism: which decisions moved, to whom, and what rule stopped them drifting back to the founder within a month. A weak answer talks about empowerment and trust without a single named decision.
2. Walk me through the operating cadence you ran at your last company. Which meeting did you kill?
Listen for: Good COOs can recite the rhythm from memory, who owned each review, and at least one meeting they cancelled because it produced nothing. If every meeting they ever ran was apparently worth keeping, they add process but never subtract it.
3. What surprised you the last time a company you ran went from fifteen people to forty?
Listen for: Honest answers name something that failed: a first-time manager who sank, handoffs that worked at fifteen and silently stopped, information that used to travel by osmosis. Anyone who describes a smooth scale-up either was not close to it or is not telling you the truth.
4. Tell me about holding someone accountable who was close to the founder. How did it end?
Listen for: You want a specific conversation, what the person was told, and a real outcome, including an exit if that is where it went. Vague answers about difficult conversations, with no ending, mean they escalate the hard ones back to you, which defeats the seat.
5. How do you decide what comes to me and what you just handle?
Listen for: A strong candidate proposes a concrete line: spend thresholds, hiring decisions, anything customer-facing, and a weekly written summary of what they handled without you. A weak one says they will keep you in the loop on everything, which means you have hired a very expensive messenger.
6. Describe a process you inherited and deleted. What did it cost to keep and what happened when it went?
Listen for: The best operators treat process as something with a price. Listen for whether they measured the cost of the old way and checked nothing broke after removal. Candidates who only tell you about processes they installed will bury a thirty-person company in ceremony.
Red flags
- Reaches for a framework by name, EOS or Scaling Up or similar, before asking how your company actually runs today.
- Wants to redraw the org chart in week one, before sitting in your existing meetings and watching where work really flows.
- Career built entirely inside large companies where finance, HR and IT already existed. They have run machines but never built one.
- Every story ends tidily and nobody was ever upset. Most of this job is friction, and a candidate with no scar tissue has been avoiding it.
What day ninety should look like
Agree these before they start, in writing, in the brief. A fractional engagement without a ninety-day marker drifts into a retainer nobody remembers the point of.
- A written operating rhythm that has been running for at least a month: named meetings, named owners, and at least one meeting cancelled because it was not earning its place.
- The founder visibly out of at least three recurring decisions, each with a named owner, and no quiet drift back. Ask the team, not the COO, whether it held.
- One recurring firefight traced to its cause and fixed, with a number that shows it stopped happening rather than an assurance that it did.
When a fractional COO is the wrong answer
- You need someone in the building five days a week running live firefights. That is an interim or full-time COO. Two days a week of a good operator cannot hold a company that is on fire the other three.
- The pain sits inside one function: pipeline chaos, finance chaos, a delivery team missing dates. Hire that seat instead. A COO layered over one broken function mostly watches it stay broken.
- You are under about ten people. At that size the founder should still hold operations personally, and imported process is weight the company does not need yet. Come back at fifteen.
If one of those is you, say so in a brief anyway and we will tell you straight. Sometimes the honest answer is interim or full-time.
What to put in a fractional COO brief
- List the specific decisions you want off your desk, by name. "Stop being the escalation point for client complaints" gets a better response than "help us scale operations".
- State the decision rights up front: can they change roles, kill meetings, put someone on a performance plan without asking you first? Good COOs walk away from briefs where they would need permission for everything.
- The thing founders always forget: say what must not change. Every company has one or two things, a founder-led ritual, a service promise, that look like inefficiency and are actually the business. Name them or the COO will find out by breaking one.
What the contract should cover
General guidance rather than legal advice: have the engagement letter read by somebody who acts for you. These are the clauses that cause the arguments when they are missing.
- The days. How many a week or a month, whether they roll over, and the day rate or monthly figure that pays for them.
- Notice. A month either way is the usual term, long enough to hand over and short enough that neither side is trapped.
- Intellectual property. Who owns the models, documents and code the COO produces. It should be the company, said in writing, because without a clause it may not be.
- IR35. Whether the engagement is inside or outside, who made the determination, and the reasons. IR35 for fractional executives explains who carries the decision.
The rest, from confidentiality to conversion terms, is in what a fractional executive contract should say.
Common questions about hiring a fractional COO
How quickly can a company hire a fractional COO?
Faster than any other way of filling the seat. A request to a fractional COO on the bench is accepted or declined within three days, and a brief to Operator Search returns a shortlist in five business days. A permanent COO search runs twelve to sixteen weeks to an accepted offer and then a notice period of three to six months, which is why fractional cover is the normal bridge.
How many days a week should a fractional COO be hired for?
Two is the most common arrangement and one to three is the working range. Below a day a week nobody can own a function; above three the seat has usually become a full-time one and the honest conversation is about converting. Start at the lower end and add a day when decisions begin queueing for the COO's days.
What is the monthly cost of a fractional COO two days a week?
At the 2026 UK band of £700 to £1,300 a day, two days a week over 46 working weeks comes to £5,367 to £9,967 a month, invoiced by the operator's own company with no employer National Insurance, pension or recruitment fee on top. Higher end for turnarounds, scale-ups past 50 people and multi-site operations.
Can a fractional COO later become the full-time COO?
Yes, and it is one of the better routes to a permanent hire because both sides have had months of working interview. Raise the possibility early so the operator can plan their other clients, agree a start date around their notice to those clients, and check the engagement letter for any conversion terms before the conversation.
What should a brief for a fractional COO say?
The three outcomes the seat owns in the first ninety days, the days a week and whether on site matters, who the COO reports to and who reports to them, the systems and data they will inherit, and the budget as a day rate or a monthly figure. A brief that lists tasks rather than outcomes attracts people who want a to-do list, and the fractional COOs worth hiring decline it.
When should a company hire a full-time COO?
When the seat needs five days, not two: a team of leaders to run, a transaction to carry, or a board that wants the COO in every room. A full-time COO in a UK company of twenty to two hundred people is paid a base of £100,000 to £170,000 in 2026, and a retained search adds 25 to 33 per cent of first-year earnings. Until the days are queueing, fractional is the cheaper test.
How long does it take to hire a COO, fractional or full time?
A fractional COO is usually met within days and starts in one to three weeks: Operator Search returns a shortlist in 5 business days, and a request on the bench is answered within three. A permanent COO takes twelve to sixteen weeks of search to an accepted offer, then a notice period of three to six months, so a first day is usually six months or more away.
How do I find a part-time COO?
Four routes work in the UK: a fractional platform or bench where the day rate is published before you speak to anybody, a search run against a written brief, a referral from an investor, accountant or another founder, and the COO's own network of former colleagues. Whichever route, shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage, and agree the days, the notice period and the IR35 position in writing.
Two ways in
Browse verified fractional COOs on the bench and book direct, or brief Operator Search and we run the interviews above for you.