You just raised your Series A. Your CTO is drowning in infrastructure issues. Deployments are manual, the CI/CD pipeline is held together with duct tape, and your AWS bill keeps growing.

The obvious solution? Hire a DevOps engineer.

But here’s the reality: a senior DevOps engineer in Europe costs €80,000-120,000 per year. That’s before equity, benefits, and the 3-6 months it takes to find and onboard someone good.

For most startups between Series A and C, there’s a better option.

What Fractional DevOps Actually Means

Fractional DevOps is exactly what it sounds like: you get senior DevOps expertise for a fraction of the cost and time commitment.

Instead of hiring a full-time employee, you work with an experienced consultant who:

• Works 15-20 hours per month on your infrastructure
• Brings patterns from 50+ startups — not just theory
• Ships real code — Terraform, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes configs
• Transfers knowledge to your team as they work

The key difference from traditional consulting? You’re not paying for slide decks. You’re paying for hands-on implementation.

When Fractional Makes Sense

Fractional DevOps is ideal when:

• You need senior expertise but not full-time capacity
• Your infrastructure needs are episodic — big pushes followed by maintenance
• You want to build internal capability while getting external help
• You’re preparing for SOC2 or a security audit
• Your team is too small to justify a dedicated DevOps hire

When You Should Hire Instead

Fractional DevOps isn’t right for everyone. Consider hiring full-time when:

• You have constant, high-volume infrastructure work
• You need someone on-call 24/7 for incident response
• Your infrastructure is business-critical differentiator
• You’ve grown past 50+ engineers and need dedicated support

The Numbers

Let’s compare the real costs:

Fractional DevOps gives you senior expertise at junior prices — without the management overhead.

How to Start

If you’re not sure whether your infrastructure needs a full-time hire or fractional support, start with an assessment.

A good infrastructure audit will tell you:

• Where your biggest risks are
• What needs immediate attention
• What can wait
• Whether you need ongoing support or a one-time sprint

We offer free infrastructure audits for startups. No commitment, no pitch deck — just a clear picture of where you stand.

Book a free infrastructure audit and we’ll help you figure out the right approach for your stage.