| Detail | For this role |
|---|---|
| Department | Leadership and Senior Management |
| Level | Leadership |
| Reports to | Chief Executive Officer |
| Direct reports | Engineering Directors, Head of Architecture, Head of Platform |
| Experience | 15+ years in engineering, with 5 years leading engineering teams |
Chief Technology Officer job description template
Copy this job description, replace the text in square brackets and post it on your careers page or a job portal.
Job title: Chief Technology Officer
Department: Leadership and Senior Management
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer
Location: [City], [office, branch or site]
About the role
A Chief Technology Officer owns the technology the company builds and how it is built. They set the technical strategy and architecture, lead the engineering teams, and make sure products are built well, on time and able to scale. The role sits on the leadership team and pairs closely with product. A good CTO ships reliable technology, keeps quality and security high, controls technical debt, hires and grows strong engineers, and makes technology choices the company will not regret in two years.
Key responsibilities
- Set the technology strategy and architecture, and align them with the product roadmap.
- Lead the engineering teams, and set how they plan, build, test and release.
- Own system reliability, performance and security across the products the company builds.
- Balance new features, quality and technical debt with the product leaders.
- Make the major build, buy and platform decisions, and stand behind them.
- Set engineering standards for code quality, testing, security and documentation.
- Plan capacity and scaling so the products hold up as usage grows.
- Hire, grow and retain engineers, and build the engineering culture.
- Manage the technology budget, tools and key vendor relationships.
- Report delivery, reliability and technical risk to the CEO and board.
Requirements
- Degree in computer science or engineering
- Deep hands-on engineering background
- Experience leading engineering at scale is an advantage
- 15+ years in engineering, with 5 years leading engineering teams
KRAs and KPIs for a Chief Technology Officer
Key result areas for the appraisal form, each with a KPI you can measure every month or quarter.
| Key result area | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Delivery | Committed engineering releases shipped on time each quarter |
| Reliability | Product uptime and performance meet the agreed targets |
| Quality | Post-release defects and rollbacks held below the agreed threshold |
| Security | Critical vulnerabilities fixed within the agreed window |
| Technical debt | Technical debt kept within the agreed share of engineering effort |
| Engineering strength | Key engineering roles filled and retained above the target |
Skills and tools
Tools used day to day: Cloud platforms, Version control and CI or CD, Monitoring tools, Architecture tools, Project tracking tools.
Reporting line and career path
Next roles: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Product Officer
Interview questions for a Chief Technology Officer
- How would you set the technical architecture for a product that must scale ten times?
- How do you decide when to pay down technical debt versus ship new features?
- Walk me through how you handled a major outage and what you changed afterwards.
- How do you make build versus buy decisions for a key part of the stack?
- How do you keep engineering quality high as the team grows quickly?
- How do you split responsibilities and stay aligned with the product leader?
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What does a Chief Technology Officer do?
A Chief Technology Officer owns the technology strategy and architecture and leads the engineering teams. They make sure products are built well, reliably and able to scale, balance new features against quality and technical debt, make major build or buy decisions, and set engineering standards. They are measured on delivery, reliability, quality and security.
What is the difference between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?
A Chief Technology Officer sets the technical direction, architecture and long-term technology bets. A VP of Engineering runs the engineering organisation day to day: delivery, process, hiring and execution. The VP of Engineering usually reports to the CTO. In smaller companies one person covers both the direction and the execution.
Who does a Chief Technology Officer report to?
A Chief Technology Officer reports to the Chief Executive Officer and sits on the leadership team. Engineering directors and heads of architecture report to the CTO. In a product company the CTO pairs closely with the Chief Product Officer, one owning how things are built and the other owning what gets built.