Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Head of Technology

🎯 Role Definition

The Head of Technology is a pivotal executive leadership role, serving as the senior-most authority on the company's technological strategy, infrastructure, and execution. This individual is responsible for building and leading a world-class engineering organization, ensuring that our technology not only supports but also actively drives the company's ambitious business objectives. Blending deep technical expertise with sharp business acumen, the Head of Technology translates the corporate vision into a scalable, secure, and innovative technology stack. They are the ultimate owner of our engineering culture, technical roadmap, and the operational excellence of all digital assets, acting as a key partner to the C-suite and board of directors.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Director of Engineering / VP of Engineering
Principal Architect / Distinguished Engineer
Senior Engineering Manager with significant strategic scope

Advancement To:

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Board Advisor / Technical Fellow

Lateral Moves:

Chief Product Officer (CPO)
Chief Operating Officer (COO) in a tech-centric organization

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop and articulate the company's long-term technology vision and strategic roadmap in alignment with overarching business goals and market trends.
Lead, mentor, and scale a high-performing, cross-functional engineering organization, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, ownership, and psychological safety.
Drive the architectural design and evolution of the company’s software, data, and infrastructure systems to ensure robust scalability, high availability, and uncompromising security.
Oversee the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), from ideation and planning to deployment and maintenance, continuously refining agile methodologies for maximum efficiency and quality.
Establish and enforce best-in-class engineering standards, practices, and processes, including code quality, automated testing strategies, and sophisticated CI/CD pipelines.
Own and manage the technology budget, encompassing capital expenditures, operational costs, and vendor contracts, to ensure optimal resource allocation and a clear return on investment.
Champion a proactive, multi-layered cybersecurity strategy, implementing and auditing policies and controls to protect company assets and customer data against emerging threats.
Act as the primary technology evangelist and a key spokesperson, effectively communicating the company's tech strategy to the executive team, board of directors, investors, and key partners.
Evaluate and champion the integration of emerging technologies, open-source projects, and third-party solutions to drive product innovation and maintain a distinct competitive advantage.
Partner closely with the Head of Product to ensure a seamless and collaborative relationship between the product roadmap and the engineering team's capacity and execution.
Ensure all technology practices and systems are fully compliant with relevant legal and regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2.
Direct and manage all IT infrastructure, including cloud services (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), networking, and internal corporate IT systems, to guarantee high availability and peak performance.
Develop, test, and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan for all critical technology systems and services.
Attract, recruit, and retain top-tier engineering talent, championing diversity and inclusion initiatives to build a team that reflects the company's core values.
Define, track, and report on key performance indicators (KPIs) and engineering metrics (e.g., DORA metrics, uptime, bug-to-feature ratio) to drive continuous improvement.
Provide expert technical guidance and consultation to all business departments, empowering them to leverage technology to improve efficiency and achieve strategic objectives.
Strategically manage and reduce technical debt by creating and executing a clear plan to refactor and modernize legacy systems while balancing new feature development.

Secondary Functions

Represent the company's technology function at industry conferences, panels, and networking events to build our employer brand and stay ahead of trends.
Manage relationships with key technology vendors, negotiating favorable contracts and ensuring service level agreements (SLAs) are consistently met or exceeded.
Oversee the company’s intellectual property strategy as it relates to technology, including participation in patent applications and managing open-source contributions.
Advise on the technical aspects of corporate development activities, such as performing technical due diligence for potential mergers and acquisitions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Enterprise & Cloud-Native Architecture: Deep, hands-on expertise in designing and managing complex, scalable systems on major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
Modern Software Development Methodologies: Mastery of Agile, Scrum, and Kanban frameworks and the ability to tailor them to the team's needs.
DevSecOps & CI/CD Implementation: Proven ability to build and lead a culture of "you build it, you run it" with robust, automated pipelines for integration, testing, and deployment.
Cybersecurity & Data Governance: A strong command of security principles, threat modeling, and data privacy regulations to build a resilient and compliant technology organization.
Large-Scale System Design: Expertise in designing for scalability, reliability, and performance, with a strong understanding of microservices, distributed systems, and API-first principles.
Technology Budgeting & Financial Management: Skill in developing and managing multi-million dollar technology budgets, forecasting costs, and linking technical investment to business value.
Data Engineering & BI Strategy: Experience in architecting and overseeing data pipelines, data warehouses, and business intelligence platforms to enable data-driven decision-making.

Soft Skills

Strategic Vision & Business Acumen: The ability to think beyond the code and understand how technology decisions impact the company's P&L and strategic position.
Inspirational Leadership & Team Empowerment: A natural leader who can motivate, mentor, and grow engineering talent at all levels, fostering a positive and high-performing culture.
Executive-Level Communication & Influence: Exceptional ability to distill complex technical concepts into clear, concise language for non-technical stakeholders, including C-suite executives and the board.
Complex Problem-Solving: A calm and decisive leader who can navigate ambiguity and crisis, breaking down large-scale problems into actionable steps.
Change Management: Adept at leading organizational transformation, gaining buy-in from teams, and successfully guiding them through significant technological or process shifts.
Talent Magnet: A proven track record of attracting, assessing, and retaining exceptional engineering talent in a competitive market.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred Education:

Master's Degree (e.g., M.S. in a technical field or an MBA)

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Software Engineering
Information Technology
Business Administration

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

12-15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering and technology.

Preferred:

A minimum of 7+ years in a senior leadership capacity (e.g., Director, Sr. Manager, VP), with direct responsibility for managing and scaling engineering teams of 25 or more.
Demonstrable experience managing the technology function through significant company growth (e.g., scaling a product, post-Series B expansion, or enterprise-level transformation).
Experience reporting directly to the C-suite (CEO, CTO) and presenting to a Board of Directors is highly desirable.