CTO meaning

CTO stands for Chief Technical Officer - a representative of the company's top management (in addition to the English abbreviation, you can find the name "technical director"), who determines the company's technology strategy and is responsible for introducing new technologies - all in order to achieve financial and strategic business goals.

Depending on the goals of a particular company, the CTO may be the head of the entire IT department or be responsible for individual blocks (as a rule, in the second case, the CTO reports to the CIO).

In essence, the CTO is responsible for developing new products, optimizing production and introducing new processes into the structure of the company.

What does CTO do and why?

A list of duties and approximate work tasks of a CTO can be summarized as follows:

determines the technology development strategy;responsible for the budget;defines the technology stack;determines approaches to the development, research and launch of new products;ensures that the infrastructure meets the company's goals;is the main contact person for the company's management in terms of technology;Responsible for hiring, as well as for the efficient operation of the technical departments.

All this in order to successfully achieve the company's business goals through the launch of new products and the implementation of a technological strategy. This can be called the main task of the technical director.

Among the projects that CTO will have to work on in order to fulfill its main task, we can list:

introduction of flexible approaches to development;building a product approach in the company;transition to a new technological stack;launch of an R&D laboratory;launching new products on the market;increase the fault tolerance of services and system performance;development of new systems and improvement of existing ones.

The most interesting thing is working with people, building strong effective teams with comfortable working conditions. New ideas, the implementation of which no one was engaged in, and the creative process of finding solutions to complex problems. Products, technologies and approaches that can deliver value quickly. There is in our work and not very interesting, but sometimes necessary - bureaucracy and routine, somewhere more of them, somewhere less.

Where and how to study to become a CTO?

Since this text, unlike the previous ones, is about the role of a top manager, a certificate of successful completion of an online course will definitely not be enough.

Now the market welcomes a mix of higher technical education and additional education (for example, MBA) in the field of finance and / or strategic management of a company and / or digital. This combination gives the representatives of the profession a broad outlook and a good understanding of business.

But it is worth noting that, first of all, employers look at previous experience, completed projects and the size of the business or teams that the candidate managed.

Primary requirements

It is important to note that, despite the “technological nature” of the role (the word “technical” is even included in the title), for the CTO position, soft skills may be more important and significant than hard skills.

In general, the list of requirements usually looks like this:

experience in managing a technology division in a company in the same or similar industry (for example, IT companies tend to invite candidates with experience in similar / similar products, and retail companies - candidates with experience in retail and / or in e-commerce);strategic vision (the ability to compare the company's business goals with the tasks of its unit);Experience in managing a similar or similar team;experience in implementing similar or similar projects (for example, if a company plans to transform an online store into a marketplace, then candidates will be expected to have experience in launching and / or developing a marketplace);developed communication skills (in this role, communication with business, selling your ideas, as well as defending strategies / projects will take up most of the working time);strong leadership skills (the technical director is followed by a large team, so it is important that the employee knows how to inspire people);developed self-presentation skills (often the role of service stations is public, representatives of this profession are frequent guests at various events, which, among other things, is extremely important for the Employer brand);

At the same time, regarding the very first point, there is a myth that companies consider only candidates from competing companies for the role of technical director.

This is not true.

Approaches within the same industry are often similar. And in the competitive struggle in the current realities, the winner is the company that is the first to find completely new approaches to solving standard problems or can be the first to offer new products to its consumers. Therefore, lately we often hear a request from a client: “Just not from our industry, we want a candidate with a fresh look at our market.”