The Builder Test: 6 Questions to Evaluate a Fractional Head of AI

The fractional Head of AI market has split into two models: brokers (firms that deploy generalists from a roster) practitioners (specific people who have built and shipped AI systems in production). Both have their place: Brokers work for companies starting their AI journey. Practitioners are what you need when the architectural decisions have real consequences. How to tell which you are getting Six questions: Have they personally built and shipped AI features in production? Not managed a team that did. Not advised. Personally built. If no, everything else is secondary. Can they make architectural decisions, not just recommend them? "Implement RAG for customer support" is a roadmap. Choosing the embedding model, the chunking strategy, the retrieval evaluation framework; that is an architectural decision. A strategist writes the roadmap. A practitioner makes the decisions that determine whether the feature works. Can they tell you what is wrong with your current architecture? Not "you s