Job Placement · Technology · CTO and CIO
A CTO is accountable for the technology you sell and faces outward at the product. A CIO is accountable for the technology you run and faces inward at the estate. BLS puts chief executive pay anywhere from $75,700 to above $507,730, a 6.7-fold band. BEG runs either search, confidentially where needed, at Tier VI milestone billing of $33,440 to $40,128.
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TL;DR
The two titles in this req are not interchangeable and the pay data will not help you until you separate them. A CTO owns the technology the company sells; a CIO owns the technology the company runs. The federal band for chief executives spans from under $75,700 to above $507,730, so company size, ownership and mandate determine the number rather than the title does. Most CIO candidates are actually drawn from the top of the technical manager occupation rather than from the chief executive one. BEG separates the mandate, runs the search confidentially where an incumbent is in post, and bills $33,440 to $40,128 against milestones rather than $42,798 to $53,498 as a percentage.
Outward Or Inward
Because the two titles get treated as seniority labels rather than as descriptions of what the person is accountable for, and the published pay data spans too wide a range to correct the error.
Decide Which Job This Is
Four areas of accountability. Run your own situation down the two columns, and whichever side collects more of your hardest problems is the search you should be running.
| Area of accountability | Sits with a CTO | Sits with a CIO |
|---|---|---|
| The product | Owns the architecture of what you sell, the engineering organisation building it, and the technical bets behind it. | Usually no involvement, unless the company sells nothing technical and the estate is the product by default. |
| The internal estate | Consulted. Cares about developer tooling and rarely about finance systems or endpoint management. | Owns it end to end: identity, networks, endpoints, business applications and the vendors behind all of them. |
| Security posture | Owns product security and the security of what customers touch. | Owns corporate security, access control, audit response and typically the compliance reporting that goes with it. |
| The board conversation | Technical strategy, build against buy, platform risk and whether the roadmap is achievable. | Operational risk, spend against budget, vendor concentration and continuity. |
BEG will say when the honest answer is that you need a VP of engineering rather than a chief officer, which is common below about a hundred people. The layer below is VP engineering and product, and the operating layer beneath that is director of engineering. Full scope on the technology placement service page.
Tier VI Milestone Billing Against An Executive Percentage
Executive search is usually sold as a retained percentage, commonly a third of first-year package billed in thirds. Even at the lower contingency rates, benchmarked to the $213,990 BLS chief executive median, 20 percent is $42,798 and 25 percent is $53,498, and executive agreements frequently calculate the percentage on total package including bonus rather than base. At the $507,730 upper decile the same percentages reach $101,546 and $126,933. BEG prices a Tier VI search at $33,440 to $40,128, agreed before sourcing and fixed regardless of the package structure you negotiate.
What A Confidential Search Actually Requires
When the incumbent is still in post, the mechanics change completely. Nothing can be advertised, so every candidate arrives by direct approach and the pool is built rather than collected. References cannot be taken early without the market learning, which pushes verification to the end of the process where it is most disruptive. Internally, the list of people who know has to be agreed and kept small, because executive searches leak through well-meaning colleagues rather than through recruiters. None of that is a reason to avoid running one. It is a reason to agree the boundaries before the first approach rather than after the first leak.
Who Employs The Chief Officer
At this level all three are genuinely used, and the wrong one is expensive in a way that takes a year to surface. The employment relationship is the distinguishing fact.
| Model | Who employs the executive | How you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional CTO or CIO | The fractional firm or the individual | Monthly retainer for one or two days a week | You are pre-revenue or small, you need judgement rather than capacity, and the permanent shape of the role is not yet knowable. |
| Interim executive firm | The interim firm | Day rate or monthly fee for the length of the assignment | An incumbent has left suddenly, a transaction is in progress, and the organisation cannot be leaderless while the permanent search runs. |
| BEG permanent placement | You | Tier VI milestone fee of $33,440 to $40,128, fixed before sourcing | The mandate is defined, the board relationship is real, and you need somebody who will still be accountable for the strategy in three years. |
BEG is not a staffing agency and does not supply fractional or interim executives, so those two columns are not products we sell. A fractional CTO is a sensible arrangement for a small company and a poor permanent state for a larger one, because the institutional knowledge never lands anywhere. Related seat: DevOps and platform engineering.
FAQ
This is a Tier VI search at $33,440 to $40,128, billed against agreed milestones. Benchmarked to the $213,990 BLS median for chief executives, a 20 to 25 percent contingency fee would be $42,798 to $53,498, and at executive level those fees are frequently calculated on total package rather than base alone.
Which way the job faces. A CTO is accountable for the technology you sell, so the work points outward at the product, the architecture and the engineering organisation building it. A CIO is accountable for the technology you run, so the work points inward at systems, security posture, vendors and the internal estate. Both are senior. They are not substitutes.
The widest of any seat in technology hiring. BLS reports chief executives with a $213,990 median, the lowest 10 percent under $75,700 and the highest 10 percent above $507,730. That is a 6.7-fold spread inside one occupation, which means the title tells a benchmark exercise almost nothing without company size and ownership structure attached.
Most sit in the computer and information systems manager occupation rather than the chief executive one. BLS puts that occupation at a $175,140 median with the top 10 percent above $297,510 and 685,800 people in it. A CIO search is often a search for someone at the top of that distribution rather than someone already carrying a chief officer title.
No. BEG runs permanent direct-hire searches and places the executive onto your payroll, employed by you. Interim and fractional executive firms employ the person and bill a monthly rate while they are in post. If a bridge is what the situation needs, that is an honest answer and we will give it rather than open a Tier VI search.
Usually, and it changes the mechanics rather than the outcome. If an incumbent is still in post the role cannot be advertised, the candidate pool comes entirely from direct approach, and references are taken late and carefully. Agree the confidentiality boundary, including who inside your own company knows, before anybody is contacted.
A useful test is whether the hardest question in the next two years is what to build or how to build it reliably at scale. The first points at a CTO, the second at a VP of engineering, and many companies under a hundred people genuinely need the second while advertising the first because it sounds more senior.
BLS projects top executives to grow 5 percent from 2025 to 2035 with about 304,100 openings a year across all top executive roles. That is above the 3 percent average for all occupations but well below the 16 percent projected for computer and information systems managers, so the technology leadership pipeline is widening faster than the executive layer it feeds.
Often yes, and the risk is manageable if it is named. A first-time chief officer brings energy and current technical judgement and lacks board fluency. If the chair or chief executive will genuinely coach that, it works. If the expectation is that they arrive fully formed, the appointment usually ends within eighteen months.
23 to 35 days from discovery call to signed offer on average, based on isolved placement data, with an 86 percent fill rate on active searches. Executive searches sit at the far end of that range and confidential ones extend beyond it, because board scheduling and notice periods rather than sourcing determine the pace.
Capital and consequence. What they cut when the budget halved, what they told the board when a security incident happened, and which technology bet they made that did not pay off. Executives who cannot answer the third question honestly have either not taken risks or are not going to tell you about them.
A 45-day replacement guarantee and 50 percent off a repeat search for the same seat. At chief officer level the guarantee is genuinely the least significant clause. What determines the outcome is whether the mandate, the board relationship and the authority over budget and people were described as they actually are.
Building the technology leadership team? See VP engineering and product, director of engineering, engineering manager and data scientist, or all technology placement.
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