Part-time COO services · UK
Hire a part-time COO for your scale-up
A part-time COO is a senior operations leader on a fixed share of your week — employed on a pro-rata contract, or engaged on a day rate through their own company.
We scope the seat with you in fifteen minutes and come back with a shortlist of three to five part-time COOs, each with day rate or pay, availability and IR35 position set out.
- Shortlist of 3–5
- Pay or day rate, availability and IR35 on each
- Published UK rate bands
- A fixed share of the week
How a brief runswhat we undertake
- 01Brief30-MINUTE SCOPING CALLDay 0
- 02Shortlist of 3–5VETTED · RATE BENCHMARK · IR35After the brief
- 03InterviewsYOU MEET THE SHORTLISTYour diary
- 04Scoped startFIRST-MONTH OUTCOMES AGREEDYou set the date
- 05Fractional, interim and permanentIR35 POSITION SET OUTOn every brief
Shortlist3–5
15 minutes · video or phone
Book 15 minutes to scope the role
Tell us the situation, the days and the start date. We come back with part-time COO candidates, their day rates and availability.
- 0115 minutes, video or phone
- 02We scope the days and the pattern
- 03A shortlist of 3–5 after the call
- 04Fractional, interim, part-time and permanent briefs
Pick a day that suits · live availability
On the board · last 3 months
Part-time COO and operations roles on the board
No Part-time COO and operations roles on the board right now.
We only show real vacancies from the last three months, read from the Fractional Quest pipeline — we never pad the board. New roles appear here as the pipeline finds them.
Looking? Build your repo once on Fractional Quest and every role on the board is read against it.
Sign up now →01/ definition
What a part-time COO actually does
A part-time COO runs the operating side of the business on agreed days each week, for one company.
They turn the CEO’s plan into the processes, people and measures that deliver it, and they take the operational load off the founder.
The seat varies more than any other in the C-suite, so the brief matters: the right part-time COO for a services firm is rarely the right one for a logistics business.
CADENCE
Puts an operating rhythm in place
Weekly priorities, monthly reviews, a small set of measures every team owns. The business stops running on the founder’s memory and starts running on a calendar.
Puts an operating rhythm in place. Weekly priorities, monthly reviews, a small set of measures every team owns. The business stops running on the founder’s memory and starts running on a calendar.
Fixes how work gets done. Maps how a customer order, a project or a service actually flows, removes the steps that add nothing, and writes down the ones that matter.
Shapes the team and its structure. Clarifies who owns what, sets up management layers the business can afford, and makes the hiring plan follow the operating plan rather than lead it.
Chooses the systems the business runs on. CRM, project, finance and HR tools that talk to each other. The part-time COO decides what to buy, what to retire and who owns each system.
Prepares operations for the next stage. New sites, new markets, new product lines or an acquisition to absorb. The COO sets the plan, the order of work and the risks to watch.
02/ scope
What the part-time COO owns
Operations touches everything, which is exactly why the line needs drawing.
Agree what the part-time COO owns before the first day.
- The operating plan and its measures
- The weekly and monthly management rhythm
- Service delivery, fulfilment or production
- Organisation design and operational hiring
- Operational systems and suppliers
- Health and safety and operational risk
- Delivery of cross-functional projects
- Day-to-day team supervision (to managers)
- Payroll and HR administration
- Bookkeeping and finance operations (to finance)
- Detailed system configuration (to specialists)
- Sales and account management (to sales)
03/ which model
Part-time, fractional or interim?
Set the slider to the days the operations seat needs and choose a term.
A fixed pattern of days for one company is part-time; a COO who splits the week across several clients is a fractional COO; four or five days on a fixed term is an interim COO.
The model that fits · COO
Part-time
A fixed slice of the week on a set pattern — the same days each week, often on a part-time contract or a day-rate arrangement.
Book a call about a part-time COO →Our framing, not a measured rule: the lines between the four models blur, and many briefs could run two ways.
04/ alternatives
Part-time COO against the alternatives
Each option suits a different problem.
The question is how much operational leadership the business needs, how often, and for how long.
→ Part-time while the operation fits in part of the week; full-time once it needs a leader every day.
05/ rates
Part-time COO day rates
No source we can verify publishes a separate part-time COO band, so we show the nearest published UK figure — the fractional COO day rate — with its source named.
Type your own day rate to see where it sits.
- Part-time / fractional COO£800–£1,400Connectd 2026
- Interim COO£800–£2,000Exec Capital 2026
- Permanent COO (salary ÷ 220 days)£432–£682our median of three 2026 guides ÷ 220 days
Bands are as each source publishes them; permanent day equivalents are the salary band ÷ 220 working days, our arithmetic. Recruiter guides are named, not linked. Rates vary with sector, scope and location.
06/ calculator
What a part-time COO costs
Model a part-time COO at the days you need against a permanent Chief Operating Officer.
The slider runs across the published band for a part-time COO: £800–£1,400 a day (Connectd 2026).
Cost over 12 months
£114,400
104 working days · 2 d/wk · 12 mo · before tax
Fractional costs less over 12 months£63,225
Part-time COO, 12 months£114,400
Part-time COO, a month at 2 d/wk£9,526
Permanent COO, same period£177,625
Part-time COO, 12 months$151,569
Part-time COO, a month at 2 d/wk$12,621
Permanent COO, same period$235,335
Converted from £ at $1.3249 per £1 (Bank of England spot rate), 2 Oct 2026. A conversion, not a US market rate. Source ↗
Part-time COO, 12 months€134,374
Part-time COO, a month at 2 d/wk€11,189
Permanent COO, same period€208,638
Converted from £ at €1.1746 per £1 (Bank of England spot rate), 2 Oct 2026. A conversion, not a EU market rate. Source ↗
Our arithmetic, indicative. Permanent = the £122,500 composite (our median of three 2026 guides) median salary pro rata for the same months, plus 15% employer NI, plus a 30% search fee on the annual base (UK retained search runs 25–35%, Headhunters.co.uk). Excludes pension, bonus and equity.
At 3.2 days a week a permanent hire costs less.
Our arithmetic. Permanent a month = the salary ÷ 12 plus 15% employer NI, plus the 30% search fee spread over 12 months — the calculator’s inputs. Hover, tap or use the arrow keys for each step.
07/ over two years
Part-time, interim or permanent over 24 months
The same seat three ways, at the days a week and day rate set in the calculator. Each crossover is computed, not typed.
- The part-time COO at 2 days a week never passes permanent inside 24 months.
- Interim passes permanent at month 2.
Our arithmetic, cumulative. Permanent = the salary’s 30% search fee in month 0, then salary ÷ 12 plus 15% employer NI each month. Interim = the midpoint of the published interim band (£1,400 a day, Exec Capital 2026) × 5 days × 4.33 weeks. Hover, tap or use the arrow keys for each month.
Illustration only: one way a part-time COO’s week can divide at 2 days a week for you. Each block is half a day.
08/ decision
When to hire a part-time COO
Most part-time operations briefs start from one of four situations.
If one describes your business, a senior operator on part of the week is worth a conversation.
Which sounds like you?
Every decision runs through one person and the business has outgrown that. A part-time COO takes the operational load, puts owners in place and frees the founder for customers, product and capital.
- → Decisions queue for the founder
- → Managers waiting for direction
- → No time for strategy
Orders, projects or customers are growing faster than the processes behind them. Errors rise and margins slip. A part-time COO fixes the flow before it breaks.
- → Rising errors or complaints
- → Margins slipping with growth
- → Processes held in people’s heads
Opening a location, entering a market or absorbing a business needs an operator who has done it, often with the days stepping up during the change.
- → Expansion approved
- → Integration plan missing
- → Two ways of working to merge
The CEO wants a partner who runs the inside of the business so they can run the outside. A part-time COO can test that shape before a full-time hire.
- → CEO stretched across everything
- → No operational deputy
- → Board asking about execution
09/ tax and IR35
How a part-time COO is engaged
General position under UK rules, with the HMRC source for each point. Not tax advice — check your own case with your accountant.
01 · DEDUCTIBLE
Fees are a business expense
Fees, like a salary, are deductible against profits when incurred wholly and exclusively for the trade (HMRC BIM37000), with corporation tax at the 25% main rate.
02 · WHO DECIDES
Status turns on how the work runs
Medium and large clients make the off-payroll status determination themselves; for a small private-sector client, the executive’s own company does (HMRC off-payroll guidance).
03 · WHAT HMRC LOOKS AT
Substitution, control, mutuality
Whether a substitute could genuinely be sent, who decides how the work is done, and whether either side must offer or accept further work. HMRC’s CEST tool walks through the same questions.
04 · ON THE PAYROLL
A part-time employee is an employee
Hired on a part-time contract, the executive has the same rights as a comparable full-time worker, pro rata (gov.uk part-time worker rights), and you pay employer NI on their salary.
10/ guide
Hiring a part-time COO: a practical guide
No two COO briefs are the same, so start by writing down what is not working.
A list of the operational problems — late deliveries, unclear ownership, a founder doing everything, systems that do not connect — tells you which part-time COO you need and how many days the work really takes.
It also gives you the measures to judge them by.
Decide how the COO will be engaged.
An employed part-time COO works on a pro-rata contract with the protections set out in part-time workers’ rights.
A day-rate COO works through their own company; if your business is medium or large, you make the IR35 status determination, as HMRC’s off-payroll working guidance explains.
Status turns on how the engagement runs, not on the contract’s label.
Give the COO real authority.
A part-time COO without line management of the operational teams becomes an adviser; one with it can change how the business works.
Agree which managers report to the COO, what they can approve, and how decisions are made on the days they are not in.
Do not forget the duties that come with operations.
Health and safety, for one, needs a named senior owner; the HSE’s guide to health and safety basics is a fair test of whether a candidate has thought about it for a business your size.
The COO also often owns how flexible working requests are handled — GOV.UK’s flexible working guidance sets out the employer’s duties.
On cost, compare like with like.
The band above is the published fractional COO day rate, the nearest UK figure to part-time work; an employed part-time COO costs a pro-rata share of a full-time salary plus employer NI and pension.
The calculator runs both, and our part-time day rates page sets every seat side by side.
Our parent company covers the same seat as a part-time COO, and explains how to hire a part-time COO in more depth.
Agree what success looks like at six and twelve months: a working management rhythm, named owners for every area, a process fixed, a system replaced, a founder who is no longer the bottleneck.
If the business then needs a full-time COO, the part-time COO is well placed to help hire one or take the role by agreement.
Our part-time recruitment agency page explains how a search runs.
We recruit part-time, fractional, interim and permanent operations leaders through our parent company’s fractional recruitment agency.
10.1/ services
Part-time COO services and what you are buying
Part-time COO services come in two shapes.
One is a named operations leader on a fixed pattern, inside your leadership team, with line authority.
The other is a scoped piece of senior work — an operating model review, a systems consolidation, an integration plan — delivered over a set period.
The first is a hire; the second is a project, and it should have a scope and an end date.
Whichever you buy, ask who will do the work and what they will be allowed to change.
Operations work that ends with a report and no authority to act rarely changes much.
We put named people forward, each with day rate or pay, availability and IR35 position on the shortlist, and we take references ourselves.
What a part-time COO service usually covers
An operating model review, a management rhythm and measures, process mapping and redesign, organisation design, a systems and supplier review, and a plan for the next stage of growth.
10.2/ the seat
The part-time chief operating officer
A part-time chief operating officer is a full member of the leadership team who happens to work part of the week.
The title matters: it signals to the team that this person has authority over how the business runs, not just an advisory brief.
If the role will not have that authority, an operations director or head of operations title may be more honest.
The best part-time chief operating officers are deliberate about their days.
They spend them on decisions, reviews and the people who run the operation, and they leave written priorities for the days they are away.
Ask candidates how they structured their week in their last part-time role and what they handed to managers.
The seat often grows.
As the business scales, a part-time chief operating officer may move to more days, to full-time, or hand over to a full-time successor they helped hire.
Our parent company’s fractional COO guide covers the portfolio version of the same seat.
10.3/ for operations leaders
Part-time COO jobs and how to find them
Part-time COO jobs are a small market and many are filled by referral.
The board above reads the Fractional Quest pipeline daily; our parent site lists part-time COO jobs alongside portfolio roles, and the wider part-time executive jobs board here covers every seat.
Hiring companies read three things first: your days and availability, your rate or salary expectation, and the situations you have led — scale-ups, integrations, turnarounds, systems moves.
Say whether you would take an employed part-time contract, a day-rate engagement or either.
11/ process
How we run the search
What we undertake on every brief, run by Fractional Quest, our parent company.
- 01
Brief
A scoping call on the role, the days a week, the start date and what the part-time COO must have delivered.
DAY 0 - 02
Search
We search and screen against that brief: track record at your stage, in your situation, and references we take ourselves.
SCREENING - 03
Shortlist
Three to five candidates, each with day rate or salary, availability and IR35 position set out.
SHORTLIST OF 3–5 - 04
Start
You interview and choose. The executive you choose contracts with you.
YOU CHOOSE
12/ the family
Operations leadership across Fractional Quest
Part-Time Quest is part of Fractional Quest.
When the operations seat is portfolio, fixed-term or permanent, these pages cover it.
A COO shared across a portfolio of clients: what it is and what it costs.
Fractional, interim, part-time and permanent executive search in one firm.
13/ questions
Questions, answered
For hiring managers, and for executives looking for the role.
Book 15 minutes · shortlist of 3–5
Start with the brief.
Fifteen minutes to scope the seat, the days and the start date.