ROLES

CTO

Chief Technology Officer

The executive accountable for technology choices, engineering delivery, and the technical risk that lands on the board agenda.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-24 byKevin Riedl wiki β†—

A CTO owns three things: what you build on, how reliably you ship it, and whether the architecture you chose two years ago still serves the business today. They are not just the most senior engineer. They are the operator who decides which fires get fought and which get acknowledged-and-deferred.

At Wavect we distinguish three flavors. A founding CTO sits on the cap table and is in the trenches writing code. A scale-up CTO has 20+ engineers reporting in and is mostly running engineering. A fractional CTO is brought in to cover the gap when neither of those two profiles is yet justified by revenue.

The most common mistake we see: hiring a scale-up CTO when the company needs a founding one. The CV is impressive, the runway evaporates in six months. Match the profile to the stage.

// FAQ

FAQs

FAQs

Not always a full-time one. They need someone with CTO-level decision authority for architecture, hiring, and technical risk. That can be a founding CTO, a fractional CTO, or in some cases a senior tech lead with an external sounding board.
Usually around 8 to 12 engineers. Below that, a CTO who never touches the code loses the team’s respect. Above that, a CTO still writing code is bottlenecking the team.