4 days ago
The role of field CTO is now more common in enterprise software.
Software is now much friendlier. Back in the pre-millennial and perhaps pre-nineties day, enterprises got their suite of applications and data services and had to graft them onto their operational structures as best they could. A degree of customization was always possible, but not in the same way that we can now build 'composable' componetized apps - and not in the way that solidified open source offerings also offer companies a route to building freeform, sometimes-experimental or even esoteric use case software services.
The ability to work with software vendors more directly on their platform roadmaps and toolset extensions is now far more prevalent. Big technology vendors host special interest group bodies who examine potential service enhancements, customers are able to provide feedback on use case successes (and failures, or shortfalls) through formalized 'voice of customer' initiatives… and software vendors are just that bit more approachable overall.
Because vendors now have to be more engaged, they have to be out in the field more. This has led to the evolution and rise of the field chief technology officer, an individual who works somewhere in between pre-sales (where customers are laying out the scope of their requirements), sales itself and after-sales (somewhat like a luxury car maintenance service, but without the complimentary vacuum cleaning service).
But what's really behind the rise of the field CTO, how embedded and formalized is this role, what key functions do they perform and what should they be doing next?
Martin Tombs is VP for global go-to-market for analytics and field CTO for EMEA region at Qlik. He explains that the role itself is very much about thought leadership (he's a trained software engineer) and the ability to look for revenue generation opportunities while still working very closely with customers on the implementation of software toolsets to assess what works well, what could work better and what's not working now but could be made to work tomorrow.
'It's not just about trying to encourage customers to stay on platform and avoid customizations, it's more often about understanding the business requirements and technical scope (including incumbent skillsets) that a customer has when they are implementing software,' explained Tombs, who also gets heavily involved with the activities associated in his firm's customer advisory group.
Commentators and practitioners in this space talk of significant strategic shifts. These are shifts towards data-centric planning, shifts towards developer-driven decision making and (of course, no surprise) shifts towards deeper penetration of AI.
'The enterprise software market has moved beyond the days when you'd simply buy Oracle or SAP (or other) and run your entire business through it. Today we see that software-as-a-service vendors, especially in the realm of data management, now fiercely compete for specific use cases. Just look at Databricks versus Snowflake with their similar offerings but distinct strengths in ML/AI and reporting analytics, respectively. This shift requires product teams to implement an additional strategic layer connecting existing offerings with customer goals and new capabilities. Field CTOs now operate on two fronts: helping customers navigate externally while reducing internal friction between initial concept and delivered value,' said Viraj Parekh, VP of sales engineering, co-founder and former field CTO at orchestration-centric DataOps platform Astronomer.
The field CTO appears to be especially prevalent in platform-type software companies i.e. those selling software services designed to get deeply woven into a customer's digital ecosystem. In this regard, perhaps think about Databricks rather than Zoom. These aren't plug-and-play tools; they're significant commitments that transform how businesses operate.
'As these platforms have become more sophisticated, turning business goals into technical reality has become increasingly complex. That's where I come in,' enthused an upbeat Kenneth Stott, field CTO at Hasura, creators of the PromptQL data agent that enables reliable AI systems to work on data. 'Software vendors need someone in a role who can talk tech strategy without sounding like they're just trying to close a deal. The best field CTOs aren't primarily sales-driven - they're relationship builders. Customers need to see them as trusted peers who can think through all the mess i.e. technical requirements, organizational impact, policy implications, change management challenges - all of it. They're typically partnering with the customer's CTO or their direct reports to make things happen.'
So then, is the role becoming more widespread? It appears to be more common in companies selling complex technical platforms, although there aren't many formal studies of this yet (** technology analyst house suddenly thinks about commissioning report**) and many customers aren't always that familiar with the job title.
'Looking at where we are now in field sales (and questioning how formalized and standardized this position is), it has to be said that some field CTOs are somewhere close to being glorified pre-sales engineers, while others are pure strategic consultants. You'll find different reporting structures, influence levels and responsibilities across companies, but they're all operating in that sweet spot between technical expertise and strategic advisory,' details Stott, before listing this role's key function as follows:
As this role starts to further cement itself in management structures, the Hasura tech leader thinks there's no urgent need to reinvent it. He suggests that field CTOs are 'naturally positioned to become ecosystem orchestrators' now. Which means that they will help coordinate multiple vendors around customer objectives. As technology ecosystems get more complex, having someone who can see the big picture while understanding the technical details becomes even more important.
'Today we can say that field CTOs have a special opportunity because we aren't trapped in the lab or behind a desk. Since we're at technology industry shows and in the room interacting with customers and prospects, so we get to see what's really happening across the new, unexpected use cases, the rising pressures and needs and so much more. You only learn about those by being out in the world. The value of listening to leaders about how, where, and why they want to use our software services is immense, because it changes the equation. It's not us telling them about how they need to use our software or our latest engineering marvels. Instead, we get to focus on business problems, which is where the real value really comes from,' said Michael Donahue, Pentaho global field CTO. 'The job is a really mix of cheerleading, problem solving and applying front-line feedback directly into how we build and deliver for customers.'
Manesh Tailor agrees. He is field CTO for EMEA region at New Relic. Tailor began his career as a developer and has spent close to 20 years immersed in the observability and monitoring space, giving him deep industry expertise and a strong technical foundation. Tailor assumed the field CTO role at New Relic in January of 2025 following a 10-year tenure at the company where he rose through the ranks as a technical account manager, software analytics architect and most recently as the director of field engineering, EMEA. He leads a team of solution architects, who are themselves industry thought leaders.
'The field CTO role at New Relic comprises a deep expertise level across three key areas: our business and technology; our customers' business and technology; and technical thought leadership,' said Tailor. 'But it's not just about technical knowledge and complex problem solving. For me, the role is about leveraging my industry experience to encourage other software engineers to not only succeed, but to be able to differentiate themselves in their markets.'
Nick Jablonski, field CTO at Domino Data Lab says that the role gravitates around the need to very responsibly 'bridge and forge the gap' between how customers want to use the company's platform, in relation to what it actually takes to make that process work in complex, real-world environments.
'It's all about crafting an amalgam and mix of technical fluency and domain expertize and being able to translate that into how a platform can help deliver on business impact. That dual (or perhaps even three-level) perspective i.e. guiding customers and influencing our own roadmap, has become more strategic in recent years. I'm now in deeper conversations about how our platform serves specific industries such as life sciences, financial services and the public sector… and how we evolve it to meet their emerging needs.'
There's a realization at this point that a Field CTO isn't there to repeat what's in a vendor's technical product spec whitepaper, they have to provide validated evidence of how a product will behave in the real world, under real pressure, in a customer's exact setup. Andy Pernsteiner, field CTO lead at Vast Data says his company's field CTOs (plural, there are more than one) routinely build 'tailored walkthroughs' with exact commands, outputs, and rationale for a client's use case.
'These field professionals run tests on behalf of customers, flag bugs based not on the spec but on how users actually expect things to work and drive feature requests back into engineering based on real operational needs - not imagined ones,' said Pernsteiner. 'We've built a team of field CTOs with deep domain expertize in performance, networking, protocols and AI, not just generalists, but people who've lived the same challenges our customers face. Many of them came from the very organizations that we now support. That context matters. It means they know what's at stake and they know what good (and not just good enough) looks like. The field CTO is there to help us cut through abstraction to deliver software services that hold up under scrutiny.'
Hopefully, the need to surface an analysis of this comparatively modern role is clear here. Professional software engineers who work in this position are becoming more prevalent and prominent as they now also start to receive enough media training to talk to the technology press. While the role itself may still be subject to a fair degree of flux, there appears to be a solid understanding of how and why this role is now needed among the software engineering community.
The only apparent challenge now is that the software engineering community here is almost exclusively the software engineering fraternity; when we get more women in field CTO roles, things will be solidified.
