Fractional AI Officer · $5,000 / month
What is a Fractional AI Officer?
A Fractional AI Officer is a managed AI operator layer at roughly the capacity of one junior engineering hire — without the salary, benefits, or onboarding cost. It covers the workflows already in production and the ones added next, with monitoring, incident response, and a monthly report against a baseline. It is what Phronimos does after a build ships.
roughly one junior FTE, without the hire, priced flat at $5,000 / month, month-to-month, 30-day notice. We do AgentOps for firms that don't have engineers.
What does the role cover?
Six areas. The theme across all of them is that the outcome on the shipped surface stops being your problem. You keep the visibility; we carry the pager.
Operations
Running the workflows already in production: monitoring, tuning, incident response, credential rotation, silent-failure detection.
Monitoring
Coverage for the four silent-failure modes on every workflow. Alerts reach Phronimos before they reach you.
Incident response
Detection and response against the published targets on our reliability standard, with SLA credits when we miss them.
Maintenance
Third-party API changes, deprecated endpoints, prompt drift, model updates — kept current without you asking.
Rollout
One to two new workflows added per month at retainer pace, scoped and priced against the roadmap.
Reporting
Monthly report: volume handled, escalation rate, first-pass accuracy against sampled review, cycle time against baseline. Quarterly review.
Detection targets, escalation paths, response ladders, and SLA credit terms are on thereliability standard. A redacted example incident is atsample incident report.
Who hires a Fractional AI Officer?
Owner-led firms in insurance, law, real estate, recruiting, and agencies. The common shape is the same everywhere: 5–50 employees, a handful of AI agents or automations already in production, and no one internally who owns whether they still work next Tuesday.
- Insurance agencies — quote intake, renewals, carrier portal reconciliation, audit-trail requirements from NAIC governance rules.
- Law firms — intake triage, conflict checks, filing reminders, matter-status digests, review workflows with privilege boundaries.
- Real estate brokerages — lead routing, listing intake, transaction coordination, follow-up sequences that can't drop a client.
- Recruiting firms — candidate parsing, scheduling, pipeline hygiene, outreach with tone controls.
- Agencies — client reporting, deliverable generation, retainer status updates, work-in-progress tracking across accounts.
Vertical-specific compliance work — for example NAIC AI governance, or matter-level privilege review — is worked into scope where it applies. The reliability problem is the same shape across all five verticals.
What doesn't the retainer cover?
A retainer that quietly expands is a retainer that quietly fails. The scope below is stated so nobody has to guess.
Engineering time
Custom software builds, product development, backend services. If the answer is "we need to build a new product," that is a separate engagement.
Unbounded sprints
A single sprint carrying more than one workflow, or a workflow that needs weeks of net-new integration work, is priced separately as an Implementation Sprint.
Emergency staffing
The retainer is not on-call cover for a broken internal team. Escalation paths and human takeover are documented; owning the outcome is still Phronimos on the shipped surface, but not the whole business.
Legal or compliance advice
We document controls and evidence for your counsel; we do not act as counsel.
Fractional AI Officer questions
What is a Fractional AI Officer?
A Fractional AI Officer is a managed AI operator layer at roughly the capacity of one junior engineering hire — without the salary, benefits, or onboarding cost. The retainer covers running the workflows already in production, monitoring for the four silent-failure modes, incident response against a published reliability standard, maintenance, and adding new workflows at retainer pace. It is what Phronimos does after a build ships.
How is a Fractional AI Officer different from a consultant or an agency?
Consultants advise; agencies deliver a scoped project and hand it back. A Fractional AI Officer owns the outcome on the workflows we shipped: monitoring runs on our side, incidents get an owner and a written report, the SLA carries automatic credits. We do AgentOps for firms that don't have engineers.
What is the retainer size?
$5,000 / month, flat. Roughly one junior FTE, without the hire. Month-to-month with 30-day notice on either side. Priced in advance and unchanged unless scope is renegotiated in writing.
How many workflows can be on the retainer at once?
One to two active requests at a time, and typically 3–8 workflows under monitored operation once the retainer settles. If the surface grows past that, a second retainer seat is scoped rather than the existing one being stretched thin.
What happens on the first month?
The audit fee (if you started at the review) applies as credit against month one. Month one is spent onboarding the current surface: credentials handoff, monitoring bring-up on your production workflows, escalation path agreement, and the first monthly report. New builds start in month two unless the surface is already stable.
What industries do you take?
Owner-led firms in insurance, law, real estate, recruiting, and agencies are the current mix. The offer is cross-vertical on purpose — the reliability problem is the same shape everywhere. Vertical-specific compliance work (NAIC governance, legal privilege review) is worked into scope where it applies.
Retain the operator, not just the code.
A monthly line in the operating budget with an owner attached. Month-to-month, 30-day notice, first month typically credited against a prior review.