What is a Field CTO anyway?

I get this question a lot, and as both the Merriam-Webster and Urban dictionary come up empty, I thought I’d give my perspective on it. Having held the title at several companies now, and having interacted with multiple other people across different organizations who’ve held the same title, it’s clear there is no standard definition. The answer as usual in our field of IT is, it depends.?

As pointed out by the late great https://geek-whisperers.com/ podcast multiple times, if you want to ensure you don’t get caught on the wrong side of the Excel sheets once the job cuts come in, you better clearly align yourself with a certain part of the business, for the FCTO role that typically boils down to Field Sales in reporting structure, aligned to the sales number, so your impact can be easily measured. I’ve also seen the role be aligned more closely to marketing in reporting structure. The actual role itself is likely a hybrid of sales and marketing.

Isn’t a Field CTO just an SE with a sport’s coat?

The assumption I'm making and the experience I have myself is looking at the role of FCTO in an IT vendor context. There are other contexts, which are just as valid. There are FCTO roles at resellers and other organizations, but I can't speak to those.

There are many parts of the vendor SE role that overlap on paper with a Field CTO role. An FCTO is typically an individual contributor without any direct reports. If you look at SE vendor descriptions, you’ll see more and more mention of requiring CxO level interactions (of course, you can wish for anything in theory), further blurring the lines perhaps.

The way I’ve approached my FCTO role in the past was to provide a different perspective towards customers and partners, and to be more involved with industry knowledge and perspective, instead of solution knowledge and perspective, which is usually the SE's purview. My interactions were with non-technical leaders at organizations, press, analysts, etc. in much more diverse settings than a typically buyer - seller type scenario.?

I’ve worked with FCTO’s with a complete entourage. One episode comes to mind where I expected to call an FCTO from an alliance partner, only to meet with two of his handlers who wanted to pre-vet the approach and deem it worthy of his time. I’ve always been on the bootstrap and do everything yourself side of the equation, a road warrior with a backpack ready to be deployed in any direction at a moment's notice.

The FCTO is sometimes also called a regional CTO or solution based CTO. For example, you could have the "EMEA CTO" or "WEUR CTO" or something like "Storage CTO", again likely these are field sales functions and not traditional engineering CTO roles, although I've seen exceptions.

A familiar description of the role would be something like:

“As Field Chief Technology Officer, you will have a high impact role in working with the community, providing thought leadership, supporting strategic customer and partner engagements, and actively providing real world feedback to product teams to enhance the product, driving new features before they are released, and helping educate the sales organization on key components of their focus area technology. The Field CTO will share their thought-leadership and deep industry knowledge with C-level staff, architects, senior leaders, and prospects at industry conferences, user groups, and partner events. The role expects dynamic and engaging (technical) communications and presentation skills, plus the ability to engage and relate to a broad audience, including press and analysts, expect a ton of travel and dietary challenges due to numerous CxO dinner events”.

This is really an octopus role where, depending on where you are on the org chart, you need to leverage your influence to get things done, as you typically don’t have any direct say. I’ve been involved in early product releases, building internal enablement for both sales and pre-sales teams, building competitive material, creating hundreds and hundreds of talks and slide decks for a wide range of events both internally and externally. It is one of the most enjoyable parts of the role. You get to work on something new multiple times a day.

A word on the Office of the CTO

The CTO and the Office of the CTO (if that organization exists) can house the FCTO or not. More often than not, I’ve found the FCTO is directly part of the sales org and has some sort of link to the Office of the CTO. Typically, the Office of the CTO leads the technological vision for the company, so that it can continue to evolve and exist. What is interesting next, and how can we leverage that for ourselves are our (future) customers?

The CTO (as head of the office of the CTO) is the executive responsible for an organization’s technology vision and research and development (typically, not always). The CTO evaluates an organization’s immediate and long-term needs to make the best monetary investments and internal resource commitments to achieve company objectives.

The CTO is one of the key executives that drive a company’s vision and technology strategy, while simultaneously considering the needs of its customers as a top priority. Being part of the office of the CTO is typically a coveted position, as you can see and influence a lot of the future vision of the company.

As mentioned on the outset, there is no standard definition of a Field CTO. It is very much industry and company dependent. I can comment on my experience though, and mention it is one of the most versatile and fun roles to hold in an organization. Many IT vendors are currently looking for regional FCTO's, so I would definitely keep an eye out if you are interested.

Have another take on the role?, please let me know, would love to discuss.