What does a CTO do?

A chief technology officer (CTO) is the executive who answers for the technology a company sells or runs for its customers. That is the software, its data, the cloud under it and the team that builds it. The CTO reports to the management or belongs to it.

What a CTO does in a company

The CTO decides how the product is built and who builds it. In a smaller company the product can be a customer portal, an online shop or a data service.

Day to day, a CTO plans releases with the developers and reviews the architecture of new work. The CTO decides which developers the product needs and how code reaches production. The budget for development, cloud and licenses belongs to the position.

In a startup the CTO is often the first developer and writes much of the code. In an established company the CTO leads the people who write it.

The difference between a CTO and a Head of IT

The CTO decides about the product. The Head of IT decides about the company’s own IT.

A CTO fits when customers use your software, your portal or your data. A Head of IT fits when the question is whether your staff can work. A smaller company can give both columns to one person. Then the title matters less than the column that comes first.

CTO, CIO and the German titles

A CIO answers for the part IT plays in the company strategy and sits on the executive board more often than a Head of IT. In many German mid-sized companies the titles CIO and Head of IT cover the same work. I was a CIO myself and describe what a Chief Information Officer does from that position.

German companies advertise the CTO position under several titles. A technischer Geschäftsführer is a managing director of the GmbH, and the appointment is entered in the commercial register. A technischer Leiter heads the technical department and reports to the management. CTO is the English title, and firms use it for either form.

An interim CTO does the same work full time for a limited period. The period starts when the CTO leaves or is away for months. It ends with a handover to the successor.

Where I have done this work

I was Managing Director and CTO of a company that built a global real estate database. I worked on its databases first as a developer and later as CTO. I hired the people and led the teams.

As CIO of a Frankfurt fintech I was responsible for the budgets and held procuration. I had disciplinary responsibility for business-critical teams and coordinated people from development, infrastructure, product and sales. In the same company I moved an infrastructure from Azure to another cloud with a failover site. I have more than ten years of leadership experience, with teams of up to 50 employees.

I plan a system from its data: what counts as one record, where it lives and who may change it. The software and the cloud follow from there. Today Claude and Codex speed up how I build and change data platforms. On a client’s platform the agents read the database and cannot push to the production branch. A person confirms production changes.

I take on the CTO position at smaller companies in Frankfurt Rhine-Main, as a freelancer or as a permanent employee.