What is fractional product leadership?

Fractional product leadership provides senior product management expertise on a part-time or project basis. SproutVest serves as a fractional CPO for Toptal, delivering strategic product management consulting, AI integration, and innovation strategy without the commitment of a full-time executive hire.

How long has SproutVest worked with Toptal?

SproutVest's engagement with Toptal is ongoing, providing continuous product management consulting, agile delivery oversight, and AI/ML integration support for their digital platforms and talent marketplace.

What has SproutVest done for Toptal?

SproutVest was one of the inaugural firms Toptal engaged to stand up its Core Product Management function, introducing standardized discovery, prioritization, and delivery practices and a shared operating model for its global product teams, alongside AI and machine learning integration work across the platform.

What services does SproutVest provide to Toptal?

SproutVest provides Product Management Consulting, Agile Delivery frameworks, AI Integration strategy, and Innovation Strategy services to strengthen Toptal's product management organization and accelerate innovation across their digital platforms.

Case Study

Toptal Fractional Product Leadership Case Study | SproutVest

At a glance

Client: Toptal
Industry: Talent Marketplace / Technology Consulting
Engagement: Ongoing
Services: Fractional CPO, Product Management Consulting, Agile Delivery, AI Integration
Headline result: A scalable product management function and AI-powered platform capabilities, delivered fractionally

Context

Toptal connects companies with top freelance talent in business, design, and technology, and competes on the quality of both its network and its platform. Rather than hire a full-time product executive, Toptal brought in outside firms to build the function, and SproutVest was one of the inaugural firms engaged to stand up its Core Product Management practice. The engagement remains ongoing.

The challenge

Toptal’s product work had outgrown its processes. Cross-functional teams needed a shared framework for discovery, prioritization, and delivery, and several high-stakes initiatives, including advanced data platforms and AI-driven features, needed experienced product leadership to land. Beneath the individual projects sat two structural questions: how to translate product strategy into measurable business outcomes, and how to fold AI and machine learning into talent matching, analytics, and the platform experience fast enough to stay ahead of the market.

What we did

SproutVest built the product management function first, introducing standardized processes for discovery, prioritization, and delivery that gave Toptal’s global product teams a common operating model. With that foundation in place, the same standards carried into Toptal’s strategic product initiatives, each aligned with its long-term innovation goals.

On the technology side, we partnered with engineering to integrate machine learning models and AI automation into Toptal’s products, improving talent matching accuracy and business intelligence. Agile methodologies and team alignment practices ran through all of it, shortening cycle times and making progress visible across departments.

Results

The engagement continues, and the foundations it built are compounding:

A scalable product management function operating consistently across global teams
AI-driven matching and predictive analytics integrated into the platform
Faster development cycles and measurably improved engagement and retention

The other side of the relationship

Toptal is also a talent network SproutVest’s founder belongs to, ranking in the top 3% of its global freelance product managers since 2019. Three engagements documented on this site were sourced and delivered through it: Elevance Health, Angi.com, and the ASU Blockchain Initiative. Each is a separate client relationship and is written up on its own page.

The work above starts with an honest read of the leadership behind it

The Trellis Leadership Diagnostic applies that discipline to how you run your company: 24 behavior-anchored items across six dimensions, about 12 minutes, instant results, free to take self-serve. The full version adds Erick's written perspective and a 90-minute debrief; $2,500, credited in full toward the first month of coaching.

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