About the role

Red Yellow Blue's pipeline grows faster than one person can deliver. The bottleneck isn't sales — it's senior advisory capacity. We're looking for one or two fractional CIO/CTO partners who can take an engagement, run it in our model, and deliver the same standard of work the founder would.

This is not a junior or intermediate role. We're looking for people who have:

Run a fractional / consultancy practice before, or
Held a CIO/CTO/Head-of-IT role at a mid-market firm and decided the next chapter is portfolio work, or
Been a senior consulting partner at a firm and want to do similar work without the slide-deck overhead

A typical engagement looks like:

Discovery + diagnostic — a 4–8 week deep read on a mid-market client's tech stack, AI readiness, vendor landscape, data hygiene, and operating model
Strategy + roadmap — building the 12-month plan with the client's leadership team
Embedded fractional advisor — 1–3 days/month ongoing as their de facto CIO, sitting in board meetings, owning vendor decisions, advising on talent and architecture
AI implementation governance — overseeing the engineering team's delivery, signing off on technical recommendations, being the senior voice in the room

You'll bring your own clients where you can, take referrals where it makes sense, and be supported by RYB's brain (mission control), implementation engineers, and discovery consultants on the engagements you lead.

What we're looking for

15+ years in technology leadership — CIO, CTO, Principal Consultant, or equivalent
Direct experience with AU mid-market ($20M–$500M revenue businesses), ideally across multiple industries
A point of view on AI strategy that goes beyond vendor literature — you've seen what's worked, what hasn't, and you can argue your position
Comfortable being the most-senior person in a room of executives without performing seniority
Existing professional network in Melbourne / AU mid-market is a meaningful plus
Right to work in Australia
Optional but valued: prior experience running your own practice, board advisory work, published thought leadership

How we work

Client-first; engagements are scoped tightly, billed on day-rate, no retainer theatre
We don't resell anything we wouldn't buy ourselves — vendor-neutral is non-negotiable
Markdown-first internally; you write things down; the brain (our internal ops system) handles a lot of the admin
Honest assessments over polished pitches — read the forms paradox and shadow AI for the operating principles
We treat clients as adults — direct, plain English, no consulting-speak

What we offer

Day rate genuinely at the top of the AU fractional CIO band
Steady pipeline of engagements — you're never selling, only choosing what to take on
Implementation muscle to back up your strategy work — engineers + discovery consultants, not just slides
Internal tooling (the brain) that handles meeting recaps, commitment tracking, FR backlogs, status reporting
Equity in your own brand — engagements you lead are co-branded; you build your reputation, not ours

What this is not

Not employment, not a path to a CTO seat at RYB
Not a "find your own clients and we take a cut" model — we either bring you the engagement or co-sell, never just rent your name
Not a junior advisor seat — if you've done <15 years in technology leadership the Senior AI Implementation Engineer or Mid-level AI Engineer roles are a better fit

How to apply

Apply through this page. Tell us:

Your most representative engagement of the last 3 years — what you owned, what changed, what you'd do differently
Your point of view on where AI strategy advice for AU mid-market is most often wrong
Capacity — how many days a month you'd consider, and what you're optimising for at this stage of your career
A short note on the kind of client conversation you find most energising

CV / LinkedIn URL is appreciated. We'll always do a coffee before any commitment.