There are quite a few communities of fractional CTOs now that can be very useful. A good source of prospects and probably quite a good training ground will be

There are quite a few communities of fractional CTOs now that can be very useful. A good source of prospects and probably quite a good training ground will be whatever local incubator/coworking space is near you. Networking with the founders there and finding out what challenges/problems they are having. Get well known amongst them as someone who can actually help and word of mouth will get you more work. It’s a lot of work and it’s not easy. It helps if you’ve already held senior roles and been through the journey that a lot of these businesses are on. It’s will be hard to pívot to it from just being a senior engineer or even staff engineer. Sadly you really need the job title before you will be allowed to do the job. There are however a lot of non technical founders who need technical guidance. Being their tech sounding board can be very valuable.