What is a CTO: Ultimate guide to the Chief Technology Officer CTO

Description The Cloud Security Engineer will report directly to the Chief Information Security Officer and frequently interact with other members of the Information Security team. They will be responsible for helping shape and design solutions to execute the firm’s cloud strategy. They will be working closely with, but not limited to, Technology Operations and Application Delivery teams to deploy, secure and monitor IT infrastructure and applications hosted in the public and hybrid cloud.

Years ago it was cloud; now it’s digital; tomorrow it will be quantum. 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. Regardless of the size, type, or maturity of the organisation, the CTO should be the most senior technology role in the business. They should hold a senior executive role, and report directly to the CEO. Usually, in companies where technology is a core part of the customer proposition e.g. technology-led companies, software companies, eCommerce, the CTO is usually the more senior role.

Depending on the size and focus of the company, the CTO position can overlap and interact with other senior technology roles such as the CIO or CDO . But often the CTO is the most senior role and reports directly to the CEO . Additionally, he needs to comprehend technology growth and trends and keep the company’s objectives in line with technology. He has to tackle team issues, debug machine learning codes, and technical debt accompanying often changing product necessities.

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They provide leadership to groups that include enterprise architects, innovation managers, expert technology specialists, shared IT services. This CTO is responsible for creating the company’s digital business technology strategies, along with leading the teams that will architect the required digital platforms. Often, CTOs adopt this role in industries that have been heavily disrupted such as retail, technology, media, and banking. However, more recently, the expectations and job description of a CTO have changed; and they have become more externally focused on technology propositions for customers.

However, CTOs are increasingly prized for their knowledge of pioneering areas of technology, such as digital products, technical vision and research and development (R&D). 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 position is among senior executives in IT companies. Ad Hoc is a digital services company that helps the federal government better serve people. Our team of experts from across the commercial industry and government brings the modern skills necessary to help agencies transform public services into digital services. Our work enables agencies to meet the needs of their users while closing the gap between consumer expectations and government.

How senior should the CTO be and who should they report to?

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. R&D teams are involved in learning new technologies, build POCs, and try to build solutions that can help a business to be more productive and effective.

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• 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.
• The continued growth of business conducted over information systems is the main cause of employment growth in this role.
• 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.
• Chief Technology Officers need to hire, build, grow, and develop high-performing technical teams.

When the life-cycle of a business is consolidating, a CTOs duties can involve overseeing several development teams while evaluating process and progress. The management of the general vision of the software product is the CTOs core driver and tasks like coding or QA are now handled by other members of the team. As you’ve might have picked up, the chief technology officer roles and responsibilities CTO’s role and responsibilities need to be flexible even working for one company. The larger the business, the more management levels there are between a CTO and employees executing practical tech-related tasks. Typically, the role of a CTO will depend on the company itself, including positions they have covered and what their industry demands.

Who Does a CTO Report To?

Which style best suits a given company bears some relation to the kind of industry the company is in. Enablers are more managerial, tasked with driving efficiencies in multi-business-unit organizations with a high degree of overlap in technologies and projects among the business units. Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as we help advance health equity on a global scale. Here, you will find talented peers, comprehensive benefits, a culture guided by diversity and inclusion, career growth opportunities and your life’s best work.

They will need to take charge and lead research and development, innovation labs, and their team of product engineers. This role type is commonly found in organisations where technology underpins the business model and where technology must be highly responsive to the business. As a result, most CTOs have worked a technical or engineering role at some point in their early careers.

Minimum Qualifications EDUCATION/TRAINING Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Economic or equivalent experience in Finance with a Bachelors degree. 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. 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.

The CTO needs to communicate technical goals to non-technical employees and make them enthusiastic about the possibilities it offers. In organizations that have both a CIO and CTO, the CTO is typically the role with more technical knowledge and expertise and that reports to the CIO, while the CIO is responsible for designing and recommending the appropriate technology. They are typically in charge of discovering and analyzing how technology processes affect the business, as well as identifying potential areas of improvement.

We are looking for a Chief Technology Officer 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. CTOs need strong communication skills to convey the technology needs of an organization and implement new technologies. Other soft skills needed include problem-solving, time management and multitasking. Chief Technology Officers typically work for corporations across industries to ensure the companies have the right technology to contribute to daily business operations.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO): Definition, How to Become One, Average Salary

Chief Technology Officers are the people who lead these teams since they are a high-level management role or a C-level position, who typically report directly to the CEO. But what is a CTO’s role within a company, and what does a chief technical officer do exactly? If you are a tech-savvy individual with ambitious career goals, this is a challenging yet gratifying role to strive for in your career as a tech professional. As opposed to other executive roles, this one suggests active participation in technical decision-making and the management of the business’s technological aspects and production resources. The CTO position requires a technical expert who can work through complex engineering issues on their own. The chief technology officer mediates between business needs and technology solutions.

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. Although there is overlap between the two positions, since both deal with IT, CTOs generally look outward, using technology to improve the company’s customer experience—the use of the goods and services. CIOs generally look inward, developing and using technology to improve the company’s procedures and operations.

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. CTOs should be strategic thinkers and focus on the bigger picture when it comes to their vision of the entire technological approach to the company’s work. They should also have great communication skills in order to articulate these ideas to staff, other C-level executives, and partners.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

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. Most definitely, says Dave Bishop, CTO at lovethesales.com, who says responsibilities vary greatly depending on the maturity of the company. The CTO title is common in startup and scale-up organisations that are using technology to help the business grow quickly.

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In other words, a CTO is a go-to guy for the other leaders when they have technical issues like “how can we accomplish this? ” Business needs are the root of all strategic technological problems. 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. By comparison, the CTO role in a huge listed company is more about evangelism, choosing the right technology trends, and being the face of technology for the customers. In large organisations it’s common for the CTO to have little experience in, and new to working in a technical position.

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However, as technology continued to advance, there was a growing need to separate the CIO job into two roles to ensure a company’s success. Supports executive, senior managers and project managers in preparing and monitoring capital budgets. Also assists in forecasting and management of long range capital plan financial model in direct consultation with CFO and CDO. Supports individual project managers in financial aspects of capital project and in reporting and consulting on financial matters.

The chief technology officer is the individual within an organization who oversees the current technology and creates relevant policy. A CTO should have the business knowledge necessary to align technology-related decisions with the organization’s goals. A good Chief Technology Officer has excellent written and verbal communication, allowing them to communicate with other Executives or lower-level management in a clear and effective manner. They should have a background in IT and have experience working in a business development role. Their professional experiences enable them to oversee company operations and identify areas to implement new IT systems or technologies.