How does the CTO role change as a company grows?

The CTO of a startup is a very different professional than the CTO in a scale-up or an enterprise.

Here I lay out the 5 core CTO roles and the 3 spin offs of the role as they happen in reality, from my experience working with CTOs.

Level 1. Startup: <10 engineers

CTO role: Build PoC (Proof of concept) or MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

Level 2a. Late Stage Start-up or Series A, has clients but still establishing PMF: 10–50 engineers

Here is where the start-up CTO gets a state of what it's actually like to be an executive CTO. If they still decide to be focused on code/tech and don't enjoy people management or take on the role of being the translator between business and engineering, they are moved sideways to a chief technical role, but not a business role (which is what the CTO role is about - making executive/business decisions.) Therefore the company hires a new CTO to lead engineering to deliver more, with a bigger team. When the founding CTO wants to hold onto the title, the company hire a VP Engineering, or SVP/Director/Head of Engineering. When the founding CTO is happy to change title, they are shifted into a Chief Architect or Chief Science Officer or a Chief Engineering Officer.

Level 2. Late Stage Start-up or Series A, has clients but still establishing PMF: 10–50 engineers

CTO role: Deliver on business goals of selling the product, while managing an ever growing team.

Level 3. Scale-up, Series B, Assumed PMF: 50–100 engineers

CTO role: Scale production processes while maintaining speed and quality with a significantly larger team.

Level 4. Scale-up, Series C+, Confirmed PMF: 100–300 engineers

CTO role: Create, deploy and release spin-off products at scale, while maintaining speed and quality.

Level 5a. Corporate Enterprise: 500+ engineers

CTO role: These are usually industry vertical CTOs, which means they often have one technical specialism area (e.g. cloud) and one industry they focus on (e.g. government bodies, or aerospace). A corporation can have hundreds, if not thousands of such CTOs. In practice, these people act like highly senior Solution Architects.

Level 5 Corporate Enterprise: 500+ engineers

Regional CTO: Usually reports to a GM (General Manager) for that region and/or to the Global CTO. They often ensure there is alignment between the various engineering efforts across that region and they deliver and feed into the bigger business goals of the region.

Level 5 Corporate Enterprise: 500+ engineers

CTO role: Vision of Product/Technology 3–5 years ahead (timeframe depends on industry type), R&D Office.

I will cover the reasons why so many founding CTOs are often moved sideways, with or without a job title change.

How many times have you seen this evolution in the companies you have worked with or at?

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