When your engineering team is scaling quickly, it’s tempting to dive in and hire fast.
But to build efficiently, you need the right players in the right seats—and sometimes, you only need them for part of the journey.
With a mix of full-time and fractional hires, you can bring on expertise exactly when you need it and cut back when you don’t.
In this guide, we’ll break down the key technical roles essential for scaling and discuss when a fractional hire might be the strategic answer to meet your business goals.
Whether you’re building fast or optimizing costs, fractional roles can deliver the agility and talent needed to stay competitive.
Key roles for fast-growing engineering teams (and why they matter)
Let’s start with the essential players who keep your engineering operation running smoothly. These roles form the backbone of a high-performing team, especially in fast-growth phases where precision and efficiency are crucial.
1. DevOps specialists
Why they’re crucial: DevOps specialists streamline workflows, optimize deployment and ensure your infrastructure is rock-solid. They automate processes, making it easier to manage continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
When to hire fractionally: A fractional DevOps expert is ideal for specific infrastructure builds or cloud migrations. Once your setup is running smoothly, you may not need them full-time, but they can be called in periodically to improve or troubleshoot the system.
2. QA engineers
Why they’re crucial: Quality assurance engineers catch bugs, maintain product quality and provide testing frameworks, ensuring everything you ship is reliable and ready for the market.
When to hire fractionally: Fractional QA engineers work well during critical testing phases, such as before a major product launch. You can engage them intensively when you’re ramping up testing, then scale back when QA needs are lower between product releases.
3. Data engineers
Why they’re crucial: Data engineers build and maintain the infrastructure that enables data flow within your organization. For fast-growing teams, data engineers help leverage insights to make better product and strategy decisions.
When to hire fractionally: If you need specific data architecture set up, like a one-time build of data pipelines or analytics infrastructure, fractional hiring can help. Bring in experts for short-term data needs and transition to full-time when you need ongoing data monitoring.
4. UX/UI designers
Why they’re crucial: Good design is everything. UX/UI designers ensure the products you build are intuitive, user-friendly and designed for optimal user engagement.
When to hire fractionally: Fractional UX/UI designers are perfect when you’re creating a new product or major feature but don’t require continuous design work. Use them for project-based design sprints, and transition to in-house design when you need constant, iterative feedback on the user experience.
5. Product managers
Why they’re crucial: Product managers coordinate between stakeholders, developers and customers to ensure projects stay aligned with business goals. For fast-growing teams, they help prioritize and streamline product roadmaps.
When to hire fractionally: If you’re running a lean operation, consider fractional product managers for early-stage products to develop the roadmap and strategies. Once you have more established products and need ongoing alignment, a full-time hire becomes valuable.
When to go full-time vs. fractional: Aligning hiring with growth goals
Choosing between full-time and fractional roles depends largely on the strategic priorities of your organization and how you balance speed with long-term stability.
When to go full-time
Roles that are core to operations: Positions central to your daily operations or essential to maintaining business continuity should be full-time. Full-time roles ensure continuity, making sure foundational positions are always covered and the knowledge base grows in-house.
Example: Engineers working on core features and infrastructure—like product architects—should be full-time. Their ongoing work and familiarity with the codebase are crucial for future projects.
When to go fractional
Project-based or short-term needs: Fractional hires shine in roles that involve specialized skills for time-limited projects or high-growth periods. When you’re focusing on a one-time product build, hiring fractionally allows you to get the expertise you need without committing long-term.
Example: If your growth goal is to ship fast and on a budget, fractional hires bring in specialized skills without the cost of full-time employees, making them ideal for short, impactful projects.
Roles that scale with growth: Sometimes, you’ll need to ramp up quickly. Hiring fractionally enables you to scale without committing to the full-time salaries and benefits that come with W2 hires.
Example: During periods of rapid feature releases, augmenting your team with fractional DevOps or QA engineers can provide the additional hands you need without long-term commitments.
Practical tips for seamless integration
Bringing on fractional hires provides flexibility, but it’s crucial to manage them effectively to maximize impact without overloading your core team. Here’s how to integrate them seamlessly and ensure they deliver results.
1. Set clear objectives and deliverables
Fractional hires benefit from well-defined tasks. Instead of leaving them to navigate ambiguous requirements, outline specific goals and deadlines. Clarify your expectations early to ensure they’re aligned with team objectives and performance metrics.
Pro tip: Use an onboarding checklist. Make sure they understand project objectives, key performance indicators and whom they’ll report to. This way, they can focus immediately on hitting the targets you set.
2. Provide the right tools for collaboration
Fractional hires are often remote, so effective collaboration is key. Equip them with access to tools your team uses for project management, documentation, and communication. This ensures they stay updated on project status and can provide real-time feedback when necessary.
Recommended tools: Platforms like Slack, Asana and GitHub make it easy for fractional hires to collaborate with your team and integrate quickly into the workflow.
3. Appoint a point of contact to minimize hand-holding
Designate a team member as a point of contact for each fractional hire. This minimizes the friction of coordinating across departments and reduces the burden on full-time team members. Having a go-to person ensures that fractional hires have quick answers when they need them and can stay productive without bottlenecks.
4. Hold regular check-Ins to stay on track
Schedule regular check-ins—weekly or bi-weekly—to discuss progress, align on any project shifts and ensure deliverables are on track. These meetings don’t have to be exhaustive, but they’re important for maintaining alignment and identifying roadblocks before they become issues.
Building an agile, impactful engineering team
For fast-growing engineering teams, the combination of full-time and fractional hires offers the best of both worlds. Full-time roles bring continuity, depth and alignment with long-term objectives. Fractional hires offer speed, agility and project-based expertise, empowering teams to scale efficiently without the overhead of permanent roles.
At TechTeems, we specialize in helping teams like yours strike the right balance between flexibility and commitment. By identifying which roles to fill fractionally versus permanently, you can build a lean, efficient engineering team designed to meet today’s challenges—and tomorrow’s opportunities.
