CTO Search

The CTO is the most ambiguously defined C-suite role in most technology companies. At one company, the CTO is the most senior individual contributor — the architect of the technical vision, the person who makes the most consequential technology decisions, and the external face of the company's engineering credibility. At another, the CTO is the head of engineering by a different name — running the organisation, managing VPs, and accountable for delivery velocity and team health. At a third, the CTO is a co-founder who built the original product and is now trying to figure out what the role means as the company scales past the stage where one person can hold the technical context.

These are three genuinely different jobs. The search that doesn't resolve which one it is running before it begins will attract all three types of candidate, evaluate them against inconsistent criteria, and either fail to close or close on the wrong person.

The three CTO archetypes

The technical visionary. This CTO leads through insight rather than through management. They define the technical direction, evaluate emerging technologies for strategic relevance, and give the engineering organisation its north star. They are credible at a board level and at a conference stage. They are often not interested in — and not good at — the operational work of running an engineering organisation. Companies that hire this archetype typically need a strong VP of Engineering to run the day-to-day alongside them.

The engineering leader. This CTO is accountable for the engineering organisation: hiring, delivery, technical quality, team structure, and the systems that allow the organisation to scale. The technical vision is important, but it is in service of the engineering operation, not the other way around. This person is measured on outcomes the engineering team produces, not on the quality of their architectural opinions. They are often less externally visible than the visionary archetype and more operationally grounded.

The technical co-founder in transition. This CTO built the product. They have deep context that no external hire could replicate. They are navigating a transition from doing everything to leading others who do it. The search for this archetype is not an external search — it is an internal development challenge that sometimes requires external support through a VP of Engineering or a technical advisor. Companies that post an external CTO search when this is the actual dynamic are solving the wrong problem.

A brief that doesn't specify which archetype the company needs will attract all three — and produce an evaluation process incapable of choosing between them.

When the CTO and VP Engineering need to be different people

Many companies try to find one person who is both the technical visionary and the engineering leader. In early-stage companies, this sometimes works — the founding CTO who is both architect and manager is a real profile. As companies scale past 30 to 50 engineers, it works less often.

The skills that make someone exceptional at defining technical direction are not the same skills that make someone exceptional at running a 100-person engineering organisation. The CTO who is trying to do both is often doing neither at the standard the company needs — spending enough time on the visionary work to maintain credibility with external audiences while the internal engineering operation drifts.

The most durable solution is to separate the roles when the company is large enough to support it: a CTO who owns technical vision and external credibility, and a VP of Engineering who owns the engineering organisation and delivery accountability. The companies that resist this separation because they want one person to do both typically pay for it in delivery quality, leadership team stability, or both.

What strong CTO candidates evaluate

Strong CTO candidates at the visionary end of the spectrum evaluate the strategic context: is there a genuine technical problem here that is interesting to solve, and does the company have the conviction and resources to pursue it? They are not primarily motivated by compensation — they are motivated by the quality of the technical challenge and the credibility of the company's technical ambition.

Strong CTO candidates at the engineering leader end evaluate the operational context: what is the state of the engineering organisation, what are the key problems to solve in the first 12 months, and is there a CEO and product leadership team they can actually work with? They will ask about team structure, technical debt levels, delivery processes, and the existing leadership team before they will ask about equity.

Searches that can't answer these questions fluently lose the right candidates early. The candidate who asks specific questions and gets generic answers is a candidate who is already looking at other opportunities.

What closes the CTO search

Resolve the archetype question before the search begins. Write a brief that describes the specific version of the role the company needs, not a composite of all three. Build evaluation criteria that are calibrated to that specific version — not a generic checklist of technical depth, leadership experience, and communication skills.

Majhi Group runs retained CTO searches. The engagement starts with the archetype conversation, because without it the search cannot be well-defined.

If a CTO search has been running for more than ten weeks without a close, request an assessment.