What does a CIO cost in the UK?

There is no single CIO salary figure, because the role is not a single thing. A CIO running a global enterprise with hundreds of staff and a nine-figure technology budget is paid in a different bracket to a CIO steering a mid-market business through one transformation. The honest answer is that cost depends on scope, seniority and the engagement model you choose, and the spread between the cheapest and most expensive arrangement is enormous. Rather than quote a headline number that will not match your situation, this page sets out the variables so you can build a realistic budget, and points you to the Starkhorn pricing page and the cost calculator for figures tied to your own scope.

What drives the cost

Four things move the number more than anything else. The first is scope: are you buying steady-state oversight, a one-off transformation, board-level strategy, or hands-on delivery. The second is seniority and track record, because a leader who has carried profit and loss responsibility and reported into a board commands more than a capable manager. The third is sector and risk: regulated environments such as financial services, or businesses facing obligations like NIS2, demand specialist judgement that costs more. The fourth, and the one most people overlook, is the engagement model. The same person costs a very different amount depending on whether you employ them, retain them, or buy their time by the day.

Full-time salary: the true cost of a permanent hire

A permanent CIO is the most expensive way to acquire the capability, and the salary is only part of it. On top of base pay you carry employer National Insurance, pension contributions, bonus, share or long-term incentive schemes, recruitment fees, and the management overhead of an executive on the payroll. You also commit to that cost whether or not the workload justifies a full-time post. For many mid-market businesses the work simply does not fill a five-day week year-round, so a permanent salary buys a great deal of expensive idle capacity. A permanent hire makes sense when the technology function is large and the leadership demand is genuinely constant. Where it is not, an interim or fractional arrangement removes the dead weight from the bill.

Day rate versus monthly retainer

Once you move away from a permanent salary, two models dominate. A day rate suits defined, time-boxed work: a technology due diligence exercise, an interim cover period while you recruit, or an intensive phase of transformation. You pay for the days used and the meter stops when the work does. A monthly retainer suits ongoing leadership where you want a senior person available on a predictable cadence: setting IT strategy, chairing technology governance, mentoring an internal team, and being on hand when decisions arise. A retainer trades the spikiness of a day rate for a flat, foreseeable monthly cost, which is easier to defend to a board. Both are explained on the pricing page, and the cost calculator models them side by side.

Why fractional or interim is usually cheaper

The core reason a fractional CIO costs less than a permanent one is that you pay only for the leadership the business actually needs, not for a full-time seat. A growing company often needs sharp executive judgement a few days a month, not forty hours a week. With a fractional or virtual CIO arrangement you carry no employer National Insurance, no pension liability, no bonus, no recruitment fee and no severance exposure. You also get a senior operator from day one rather than paying a permanent salary through a long ramp-up. The same logic applies on the security side, where a CISO as a service or virtual CISO gives you board-grade security leadership without a full-time CISO salary, which a recruiter benchmark (DWH) puts at roughly £95,000 to £600,000 or more depending on sector and seniority. For most mid-market firms, fractional access to that calibre of person is a fraction of the all-in cost of employing one.

What you are actually buying

Cost only means something against value, so be clear about what senior technology leadership delivers. A capable CIO sets direction that stops you spending money on the wrong systems, builds board-level technology strategy, and brings discipline to cyber security and governance before an incident forces the issue. The downside of going without is rarely a line item until it is a large one: the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025 put the global average breach at USD 4.44 million, and UK regulators have shown they will act, with the ICO fining British Airways £20 million in 2020 and Interserve £4.4 million in 2022. Sound leadership across incident response, ransomware readiness and emerging risks like shadow AI and AI governance is cheaper than the failure it prevents.

Why Starkhorn

Starkhorn is led by Daniel J. Jacobs, who has spent over 20 years in technology and security, 15 of them in leadership roles, including Interim Group Technology Director at VetPartners, the BC Partners-backed veterinary group, and CIO and CISO at Jardine Motors Group. He is the author of The Strategy Bridge and holds PRINCE2, ITIL Foundation and full membership of the Institute of Interim Management.

That experience leading technology and security at group level, both as an interim and in permanent CIO and CISO roles, is exactly the perspective you want when deciding how much CIO leadership to buy and on what terms.

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