Again this role will often report directly to the CIO, which frees the CIO up to be more of a business strategist. This type of role is commonly found in organisations with large technology teams focused on the day-to-day running of IT. This persona is focused on leveraging innovative technologies to transform the business model, products, and services. In terms of qualifications, many organisations require an advanced degree such as an MBA, as the role involves a great deal of complex financial, business, and management skills. The vast majority of high-profile CTOs have a computer science degree or engineering degree but that is not a prerequisite. They always need to keep an eye on emerging technology trends, use customer intelligence, watch competitors, and the external market.
In a sign of the increased expectations of top-class CTOs, the analyst says the role is moving beyond infrastructure management and towards driving technology innovation and leading digital product development. The analyst says CTOs should be looking to evolve their responsibilities in response to the business’ demands for digital transformation. The chief technology officer has emerged as a key player in the C-suite, as digital transformations become high strategic priorities for so many organizations. In business, the area of product development is encouraging innovation, while building new and developing technology products for customers. The CTO’s is the public face of the technology team, so should be indicating how this technology can make their customer’s lives better.
What is the Role of a Chief Technology Officer (CTO)?
As I move on from a corporate career after 44 years in the technology field, it’s interesting to look back at where CTOs came from, what’s different now and what the role might entail as time goes on. As my IT contemporaries ponder their careers and how they can be most valuable to their own organizations in the future, they may find value in reflection as well. A CTO can’t lead a technology division unless he or she can think and have a broad vision of either adopting new technologies or creating own solutions. Today, innovation and first to adopt and introduce could make a difference in business growth. Strategy planning is one of the biggest job of a CTO that includes creating new products, adopting new technologies, their costs and resources, and putting this all together with a team and even hiring a team. Before a technical person becomes a CTO, he or she usually had held several senior technology roles such as a director or a VP.
In fact, having a technical experience is seen as essential to understanding the nuances of technology strategy and delivery – and if you’re looking to hire a CTO, you should expect them to be skilled in these fields. Because the CTO is the public face of technology for the company, they need to display their technical prowess and insight to the business, customers, and external stakeholders. This is important for attracting talent, getting the best from vendors, and driving valuations with investors and analysts. An important part of technology leadership is developing cultural values, ethics (important in AI models), inclusivity, diversity, and addressing gender pay gaps. They need to be able to understand broad technology trends and have the business knowledge necessary to align technology-related decisions with the organisation’s results and objectives.
What is Innovation Leadership in a CTO Role?
The size, type, and maturity of a company can have a huge influence on the role of the CTO. As businesses look for efficiencies, the role of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and other process digitization has become a core and influential part of business IT. The CTO role has been around for decades but still, the role is fairly vague and varies a lot across industries and different organisation sizes.
- Because the role is dynamic and responsibilities can vary depending on the type and size of the organization, industry, and other factors, there isn’t really such thing as typical day for a CTO.
- Haake says her anecdotal evidence suggests that CTOs are starting to move more towards reporting into non-technologists, such as the chief executive or the chief operating officer (COO).
- As the people in charge of the tech team, their responsibility lies in assembling skilled individuals who will work together to deliver a product or service.
- As a leader of any workplace, A chief technology officer should prove their extensive business understanding while developing strategic plans.
- A CTO is a technical person who is responsible for all decision making, planning, and adoption of technology in a company.
As a senior executive focused on an organization’s technical requirements and challenges, the CTO’s role can be similar to that of the CIO. The chief technology officer (CTO) is the senior executive who focuses on the technological requirements, opportunities, and challenges within an organization. The CTO role has emerged as a key player in the enterprise C-suite, especially with digital transformation being such a high strategic priority for so many organizations.
CTO (Chief Technology Officer) job description
NTT DATA Services, Kris leads client innovation programs and the IT Strategy Consulting Practice. They include patience and the ability to embrace change, live with ambiguity and work under pressure. Success comes not only from knowing technology but from having the ability to recognize and convey its impact. Get good at pattern recognition and embrace critical and comparative thinking. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.
PayScale says an early career CTO with up to four years’ experience can expect an average salary of £82,723. Experienced CTOs (10 years and above) can expect to earn more than six figures. Haake says the CTOs she’s recruiting are expected to have deep technological knowledge, but their ability to move from a senior engineering position into the C-suite is dependent on softer skills, such as engagement and influence.
Ultimate guide to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
The main difference between a Chief Technology Officer and a Chief Operating Officer is that the Chief Technology Officer focuses specifically on how IT software and related technologies influence company operations. The CTO also creates policies and procedures that leverage technology to enhance products and services delivered to external customers. The responsibilities and day-to-day functions of the CTO and CIO might overlap depending on the organization, how it’s structured, its business model, and other factors. In most cases, however, it’s the CTO who is charged with staying on top of emerging technologies that might be of value to the organization. It is found in businesses that do not look to the technology teams for thought leadership.
They meet with executives to discuss the company’s current financial stability, business opportunities and other news. They also meet with operations personnel and IT Managers to strategize ways to implement new technology systems throughout the company. Depending on company structure and hierarchy, there may also be positions such as R&D manager, director of R&D and vice president of engineering whom the CTO interacts with or oversees. The job outlook for CTOs is good, as more companies go through digital transformations.
Strategic Planner
A chief technology officer’s position requires a bachelor’s degree in a computer-related field with expertise in IT management, product management, business modelling, and finance. As a leader of any workplace, A chief technology officer should prove their extensive cto team structure business understanding while developing strategic plans. A chief technology officer (CTO) is responsible for overseeing the development and dissemination of technology for external customers, vendors, and other clients to help improve and increase business.
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 (IT) industry grew, but it is also used in other industries such as e-commerce, healthcare, telecommunications, and government. Chief technology officers (CTOs) evaluate new technology and implement it to launch or improve goods and services for their firm’s clientele and customers. This type of CTO may envision how technology will be used within the company while setting the technical strategy for the company. This CTO will also look at how to further implement new technologies within the company to ensure its success.
What Is a Chief Technology Officer?
CTOs generally have at least 15 years of IT job experience under their belts. Along with technical expertise, they must demonstrate leadership, decision-making, management, and business strategy skills. We are looking for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to provide sound technical leadership in all aspects of our business. You will communicate with employees, stakeholders and customers to ensure our company’s technologies are used appropriately. As the job description changes, we might see CTOs emerge from fields outside of traditional IT, such as R&D, data science or sales. In any case, versatility and flexibility will be key intangible attributes, because the role of CTO continues to evolve just as fast as technology itself.
Glassdoor reports that a recently placed CTO snared a £200,000 annual salary, plus a £50,000 annual bonus. Harvey Nash’s Haake says CTOs are still technologists first and everything else second. The CTOs she places tend to have taken an engineering-led route to the top. They might, for example, have started their career as a software engineer and will always understand the nuances of technology. “Scaling the team became the next priority in order to grow the business and to keep pace with our ever-increasing ambitions,” he says. In a single day, a CTO might find themselves managing team issues, debugging machine-learning code, reviewing legal documentation and then presenting at a JavaScript conference in the evening.
Chief technology officer
Since CTOs need to possess knowledge of every department role, experience in several different technology positions is valuable. When a company doesn’t have a CIO, the CTO determines the overall technology strategy and presents it to top executives, according to the BLS. 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. With the emerging trend of the Chief Product Owner who is responsible for developing a company’s products, their partnership with the Chief Technology Officer has never been more important.