About this guide

Contents

1. Who it is for
2. How it is made
3. Ownership
4. Corrections

Hiring a part-time chief AI officer is a new task for most companies. The material available is mostly written by firms that place or supply these leaders, and it rarely shows its sources. This guide gathers what a hiring manager needs, from pay data to contract clauses, and cites every figure.

Who it is for

Chief executives, founders, heads of people and finance directors at companies of roughly 100 to 2,000 people that are about to hire their first senior AI leader on a part-time basis. It is equally useful to a board deciding whether the company needs the role at all.

How it is made

Pay figures come from official statistics and from recruiters and search firms, which we label as such. Provider profiles use only the provider's own published pages. Templates and question sets draw on US federal guidance for chief AI officers, published job postings and the terms providers publish. Every fact links to a source with the date we opened it, and the criteria for comparing hiring channels are on the methodology page.

We review the guide at least once a quarter and whenever pay data or a provider's terms change. Each page shows its last update and keeps a log of changes.

Ownership

OpenLazarus, whose AI-Architect engagement is one of the routes reviewed, owns this site. It is ranked first for one stated situation, a company whose goal for its first AI leader is systems running in daily operations, and its limits are listed as plainly as every other provider's. Our methodology states that frame in full.

Corrections

If a figure is out of date or a profile is wrong, tell us. We check every report and note corrections on the page.

Further reading

• Template · Contract and pricingFractional chief AI officer contracts and pricing: terms, fees and pay dataThe agreement decides whether a part-time leader has the time, authority and access to do the job. These are the fee models, the market figures and the clauses that matter.
• Template · Job descriptionFractional chief AI officer job description: a templateA part-time AI leader needs a different description from a full-time one. This template covers the decisions, hours, results and handover that a fractional role has to settle in writing.
• Template · InterviewInterview questions for a fractional chief AI officer, with good answersCandidates for this role are usually fluent. These questions, a short work sample and three reference checks separate fluency from judgment.