Meaning
Chief Technology Officer; the executive responsible for managing the technological direction, infrastructure, and engineering strategy of a company.
Three examples from work
Board update
CEOCould our CTO present the cloud infrastructure roadmap for 2027?
CTOYes, our focus is AI model efficiency and multi-region data sovereignty.
Architecture decision
ArchitectWe need executive approval to migrate our legacy databases to hosted cloud Postgres.
CTOApproved; the operational savings and automated backup safety justify the migration.
Security audit
Security LeadOur annual enterprise penetration testing report is ready.
CTOLet's review high-severity findings and allocate immediate engineering remediation resources.
Pronounce each letter: 'C-T-O'. The CTO makes top-level strategic calls on tech stacks, security compliance, and vendor partnerships.