What Is a Fractional IT Contractor? (And Why Remote Teams Need One)
Fractional IT is the sweet spot between winging it and hiring full-time. Here's how the model works and who it's built for.
If you run a remote company with 10 to 200 people, you've probably noticed something: IT doesn't really have an owner.
Someone set up Google Workspace once. Someone else picked the password manager. Onboarding is a Notion doc that hasn't been updated in six months. And when something breaks, the founder handles it. Or worse, nobody does.
This is the gap fractional IT fills.
What fractional IT actually means
A fractional IT contractor is someone who manages your company's IT infrastructure, security, and operations on a part-time or retainer basis. You get the expertise and coverage of a full-time IT hire without the $80-120K salary, benefits, and overhead.
Think of it the same way you'd think about a fractional CFO or a fractional head of people. You don't need someone 40 hours a week. You need someone who owns it, knows what they're doing, and shows up when it matters.
How it's different from an MSP
Managed service providers (MSPs) are built for a different era. They think in tickets, SLAs, and per-device pricing. They're optimized for offices with on-premise servers, not distributed teams using SaaS tools across three time zones.
A fractional IT contractor is embedded in your team. They're in your Slack. They know your tool stack. They're not triaging tickets. They're proactively managing your IT so problems don't happen in the first place.
How it's different from a full-time hire
A full-time IT person makes sense once you're past 200 employees. Before that, you're paying someone a six-figure salary to handle work that doesn't fill 40 hours a week. A fractional model gives you the same coverage at a fraction of the cost.
Who it's built for
Fractional IT works best for remote-first companies between 10 and 200 employees. Typically these are startups and scale-ups that have outgrown the "everyone figures out their own IT" phase but aren't big enough to justify a dedicated hire.
If onboarding takes too long, offboarding is inconsistent, SaaS costs keep creeping up, and security is more hope than strategy, you're the target customer.
What's included
A good fractional IT engagement covers the full stack: device management, identity and access, onboarding and offboarding, remote support, SaaS audits, and security. The best ones come with documented SOPs, regular reporting, and clear SLAs.
It's not about fixing things when they break. It's about building the systems so they don't.