COChief Technology Officer
CO
Career

Chief Technology Officer

By the numbers
Typical pay
$213,990 / yr
Education to start
Bachelor's degree
Future demand
+4.3% by 2034
People in this job
204K
Figures shown for ·closest of 2 O*NET occupations
The work
A day, hour by hour
07:30
Overnight scan

Check alerts, incidents, and Slack — anything break while you slept?

08:00
Exec standup

Ten minutes with CEO and CFO — surface blockers, flag the one tech risk.

08:30
Arch review

Engineering leads pitch a major infrastructure tradeoff — build vs. buy decision.

10:00
Roadmap session

Prioritize: patch crumbling legacy systems or ship the feature the CEO wants.

11:30
1-on-1s

Two back-to-back check-ins — one engineer struggling, one ready for a bigger role.

13:30
Board prep

Translate the quarterly tech strategy into plain slides a non-technical board can act on.

15:00
Vendor negotiation

Push back on a cloud contract renewal — six-figure savings on the table.

16:30
Tech horizon scan

Forty minutes reading: is this AI tool real leverage or just hype?

17:30
End-of-day sweep

Clear decisions, unblock teams, set tomorrow's one non-negotiable priority.

Things you do
  • Set the company's long-term technology vision and roadmap.
  • Decide which new technologies to adopt and which to skip.
  • Translate technical plans into plain language for the CEO and board.
  • Hire, mentor, and build out the engineering leadership team.
  • Review architecture decisions and approve major technical tradeoffs.
Decisions you’ll make
  • Should we build this ourselves, or buy an existing solution?
  • Is this new technology worth betting the company on, or just hype?
  • Do I push back on the CEO's timeline, or find a way to make it work?
  • Should I fix our crumbling old systems now, or keep shipping new features?
  • Is this engineer struggling, or do they just need more time?
Education Pathways · how you get there
95 in 100 went the college route · 5 in 100 found another way in 5 years or more, typically
Education mapped from O*NET:
If you like this, also look at