In large organisations it’s common for the CTO to have little experience in, and new to working in a technical position. It is found in businesses that do not look to the technology teams for thought leadership. Again this role will often report directly to the CIO, which frees the CIO up to be more of a business strategist.

Also known as a chief technical officer, this individual examines the short- and long-term needs of an organization and utilizes capital to make investments designed to help the organization reach its objectives. The CTO usually reports directly to a company’s chief information officer , but may also report to the chief executive officer of the firm. These might include infrastructure modernization, resiliency, cloud services, extensive interactions with security teams, and continued partnership with the engineering/software teams focused on quality and release management, Stephenson says.

What Is a Chief Technology Officer (CTO)?

The CTO title has been in use for over 10 years, but there is still confusion about the role and how it differs from the CIO. The title first developed at dot-com companies in the 1990s and then expanded to IT departments. The CTO role became popular as the information technology industry grew, but it is also used in other industries such as e-commerce, healthcare, telecommunications, and government.

This CTO may oversee the company’s data, security, maintenance, and the network of a company and may implement the company’s technical strategy. Depending on the company, a CTO may play one of several roles, including strategic planner, customer relations liaison, and overseer of infrastructure. While each type of CTO can be successful, it is crucial to identify quickly which approach will work best within a particular company.

What skills and backgrounds do Chief Technology Officers have?

Any discussion of the CIO vs. CTO role must also consider how these roles have changed in recent years as the economy and nature of business have changed, said Donncha Carroll, partner in the revenue growth practice of Axiom Consulting Partners. “In a perfect world, the CTO and CIO bring out the best in one another and complement each other,” said Rajeev Sharma, CTO of Grid Dynamics, a digital transformation consultancy. “They both aim to bring value, but there is also this critical tension between the two.” The most common qualifications to become a Chief Technology Officer include a minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree and an average of years of experience not including years spent in education and/or training. Work with senior stakeholders to build, maintain and mature capabilities with selected industry partners.

In the United States, the average salary for a CTO ranges between $130,000 and $195,000 per annum depending on the company’s sector. According to a 2018 report from the InfoSec Institute, CTOs in the financial sector earn around $200,000, while e-commerce CTOs earn around $76,000. The company has invested in building a 100% remote team in North America. The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.

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CTOs, on the other hand, preside over the overarching technology infrastructure. This includes developing marketable technology, suggesting new technologies to implement, interacting with external buyers and budgeting. Communicate the company’s technology strategy to partners, management, investors and employees.

Many businesses require 15 years or more of professional experience as well as an MBA for the position of CIO. They work on designing strategies on how to enforce advanced technology within the company to ensure success. Being a CTO is about connecting the technology with the vision and business goals and making sure the two matches. The future looks bright for Chief Technology Officers, as technology becomes more and more critical to business and enabling client propositions the CTO role will only gain in stature. In my eyes, the ultimate test of a great CTO is whether they can illustrate how technology helps drive the Enterprise Value of the company they work in. If they can do that effectively then their role should be deemed a success.

CTO as Digital Business Leader

As product builders, they necessarily must take an iterative approach and tend to be comfortable with failure. They use tactics like rapid prototyping and A/B testing to understand the relationship between action and response. The CTO position often overlaps with other jobs, in particular, that of the chief information officer or chief science officer. Depending on the company’s size and focus, it may have some or all of these positions. In some environments, the CTO might oversee infrastructure or act as a strategic planner or customer relations liaison. CTOs are responsible for building technological products/services that meet the customer needs.

• The corporation’s goals were to hire scientists and offer them facilities to conduct research on behalf of the company without the burdens of day-to-day office work.
• A startup founder CTO may just be a recent college graduate and may not have years of experience.
• This is important for attracting talent, getting the best from vendors, and driving valuations with investors and analysts.
• For example, an innovation-focused CTO might be measured on their product innovation, whereas an operation-focused CTO might be measured on defects or P1 incidents.

To understand customers’ needs and business problems, a CTO often engage with customers business needs and communicate with them with possible solution. That means, anything about technology including strategy, planning, implementation, personnel, and implementation fall under the CTO responsibilities. A CTO is a technical person who is responsible for all decision making, planning, and adoption of technology in a company. In large corporations, VP, Engineering and Director, Technology may report to a CTO. The software development process, especially when it comes to complex projects, suggests multiple layers of such factors as customer demands, devel…

For startups, a CTO usually is a cofounder of the company who builds its prototype and product. Get my curated once per month email newsletter with all of my latest posts as well as the best tech news, trends and innovations. There are no hard and fast rules, sometimes the CTO reports the CIO and sometimes chief technology officer roles and responsibilities visa versa. As businesses look for efficiencies, the role of Robotic Process Automation and other process digitization has become a core and influential part of business IT. However, a lot of businesses fail to understand the CTO role, and it is often the least defined role in the C-Suite.

Types of Chief Technology Officers

A small company is likely to only have one joint CIO and CTO role, whereas bigger businesses tend to have both – and that’s when things get complicated. Their primary role is to meet the agreed delivery of IT services for core systems. These CTOs usually report to the CIO, rather than holding an executive-level position and reporting to the CEO. They are often very technical and may hold the head of architecture position to guide the architecture of the IT innovations. Because a CTO needs to work with the CEO on strategy, and also advise other members of the C-Suite they should have broad business expertise, especially if they want to be credible at all levels of the company. A key part of this area is working with software vendors and partners to ensure that service levels are maintained and any new features are delivered safely.

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CTOs will make decisions for the overarching technology infrastructure that closely align with the organization’s goals, while CIOs work alongside the organization’s information technology (“IT”) staff members to perform everyday operations. A CTO should be aware of new and existing technologies to guide the company’s future endeavors. The attributes of the roles a CTO holds vary from one company to the next, mainly depending on their organizational structure.

CTOs need at least a bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, or a related field, according to Indeed. Many CTOs have at least a master’s degree, and some even have PhDs in IT or business administration fields. Knowing how technology works is crucial, but it’s also important to be able to explain the business value of a particular technology to C-level colleagues who might not be technically inclined. It’s also vital to be able to see how technology fits with strategic business goals. The CTO role naturally requires a strong knowledge of various technologies, and “real technology acumen, especially in the architecture, software, and technology strategy areas to address legacy technology challenges,” Stephenson says.

Hands on experience with latest tools and technologies is not a must have but a CTO must know detailed of a new technology before making a decision to adopt it. For example, if a CTO plans to migrate its on-premises IT infrastructure to AWS cloud, the CTO must have good understanding of AWS cloud. Not only he or she should work on the migration plan but should also have a good understanding of costs, efficiency, time, and resources the migration will take. Before a technical person becomes a CTO, he or she usually had held several senior technology roles such as a director or a VP. Both CIO and CTO roles are important, especially for big companies with distinct C-suite positions. Based on the comparison above, they both contribute to the company’s proper functioning from a different scope (CIO/internally and CTO/externally) and participate in the company’s profit and revenue growth.

The CTO often reported to the chief information officer , which created confusion in IT circles about who did what, exactly. They apply technological systems and products to simplify internal business processes. Their goal is to maximize day-to-day efficiency and productivity within the company, for instance, by automating complex tasks or enabling faster communication across departments. CTO plays his role in leading the company’s major technology or engineering units. They develop procedures and policies for a company and use advanced technology to reinforce the products and services that focus on buyers. In smaller and more early-stage companies the, CTO has a more hands-on technical and engineering role.

We expect you to be well-versed in current technological trends and familiar with a variety of business concepts. If you are also an excellent communicator and public speaker, we’d like to meet you. Technical skills are the abilities and knowledge needed to complete practical tasks. Learn which technical skills employers are looking for, how to improve yours, and how to list them on your resume. As with most jobs in the IT industry, the path to CTO starts with a bachelor’s degree in a computer- or information science-related field .

The Role of a Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

They spearhead initiatives to incorporate innovate tools and resources into the organization’s operational functions to achieve increased productivity or establish more efficient processes. They actively participate in the process of selecting vendors and products, and implementing technical systems and infrastructure. In midsize to large companies with higher executive budgets, the C-level may include a CIO and a CTO.