What Does a Fractional AI Director Actually Do?

A Fractional AI Director sits on your leadership team for an agreed number of days per month. The work falls into four areas.

AI strategy and governance. This means building an AI governance framework that satisfies the ICO, aligns with ISO 42001, and addresses your EU AI Act exposure if you have any. It means an AI register, an acceptable-use policy, and documentation that answers the three questions any regulator will ask: what AI are you using, who decided it was safe, and where is the evidence.

Vendor selection and procurement. Most AI procurement decisions are made by people who have never read a vendor contract. A Fractional AI Director reviews the contracts, tests the tools against your actual use case, and identifies data-use clauses that will cause problems in year two.

Implementation oversight. Strategy documents that sit on a shelf are not useful. A Fractional AI Director stays through delivery. That means sitting with your team, building working prototypes in real meetings, training staff, and staying accountable until the system is in production and your people can operate it without support.

Board reporting. AI needs a board-level owner. A Fractional AI Director produces the reporting, attends the relevant meetings, and gives the board what it needs to exercise genuine oversight rather than nodding at a slide deck.

A Fractional AI Director is not a consultant who produces a strategy document and moves on. It is not a trainer who runs a one-day workshop. It is not a vendor who recommends tools they have a commercial relationship with.

The fractional model means the engagement continues. The director is available by phone. They attend your meetings. They know your systems. They have read your data processing agreements. When something goes wrong, or when an opportunity appears, they are already inside the organisation.

A Fractional AI Director makes sense when your organisation is starting to use AI tools seriously and has no one with board-level AI experience. When you have a governance gap you need to close before a regulatory inspection or a procurement audit. When you have an AI project that has stalled because no one is accountable for delivery. When you need to put AI on the board agenda but do not know what that should look like.

It does not make sense when you need a full-time internal resource who is available 40 hours a week, or when your AI programme is already mature and you need execution capacity rather than strategic oversight.

At AI-Si.com, fractional AI directorship is available from £3,500 per month. That covers strategic advisory work at board level. Operational implementation engagements run from £6,500 per month. Full fractional director engagement, where I sit on your leadership team with day-to-day availability, runs from £8,500 per month.

A one-off AI readiness audit or governance review is available at £1,750 per day with a two-day minimum. That is often where organisations start.

The first conversation is free and takes 30 minutes. Bring a real problem. I will tell you honestly whether a Fractional AI Director is the right solution and what that would look like in your specific situation.

Book a free 30-minute call.