Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

I’ve never worked on a team with a CTO, so as a technologist I’m curious about what the apparent apex of my career path looks like.

Not one Role but Many

Oded Blayer has a great write up of The 7 Roles of a CTO showing that CTO isn’t a single role but many, often with a need to shift between them as needed. They are:

1. an executive setting technical strategy and vision
2. a representative, the technology face of the company
3. sometimes a manager, often of the VP of Engineering or (if lacking one) engineering managers
4. sometimes a developer, typically for new or experimental initiatives rather than day-to-day stuff
5. the owner of security and IT (unless there is a Chief Information Security Officer, as at some large companies)
6. sometimes a salesperson when prospects need to talk to someone technical
7. whatever else is needed: like many leaders, CTOs fill high-level gaps in a team until it’s time to hire someone for it

Contrast with VP of Engineering

I’ve heard it said that the role of CTO is often focused outward (to customers/investors) and upward (to the exec team and board), while the adjacent role of VP of Engineering is focused inward and downward on the operations of the engineering team itself. If the strategy vs. tactics mental model is helpful, the CTO would be more strategically focused and the VP of Engineering more tactically focused.