Chief Information Officer: What to Look For and How to Hire One

Your chief information officer will run the systems your business depends on every day and help decide how far technology shapes your strategy. A strong CIO keeps operations reliable, spends the technology budget where it pays back and leads the changes that new systems demand from people. A weak fit can leave you with stalled projects and vendors setting the agenda.

This guide is for CEOs and boards preparing a CIO search. It explains what the role should own, where it ends and other technology roles begin, which skills and qualities to assess and how to test them, and what strong candidates will want to see before they accept.

DisclosureJake Jorgovan co-founded Alpha Apex Group, which is mentioned in this article.

What a CIO owns

The CIO is the executive accountable for the company's information systems. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics counts CIOs in its computer and information systems manager (opens in a new tab) occupation. The duties it lists include assessing the organization's IT needs, directing hardware and software, protecting against security threats, justifying the funding of projects, staffing the IT team and managing vendors. At the top of a company, the role can also carry a seat in strategy: deciding which technology investments the business should make and making sure people adopt them.

A useful way to see the whole job is Deloitte's "four faces" of the CIO (opens in a new tab), from a 2013 study of CIO transitions based on interviews with 12 CIOs and 12 pilot transition workshops. It splits the role into four sub-roles. The study found that CEOs treated reliable IT delivery as table stakes and looked for a CIO who could also partner on strategy and lead change.

The same study found that new CIOs typically spent 60 to 70 percent of their time as operators and technologists in their first six months to a year, then 60 to 70 percent as strategists and catalysts after that transition phase. The exception was a company without a coherent strategy, where the strategic work could come first. Use the brief to say whether the first months should focus on stabilizing operations or on setting strategy, based on the problems the CIO is joining to solve.

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Original visualization of Deloitte’s transition framework, informed by interviews with 12 CIOs and pilot transition labs. The 60–70% ranges describe a suggested shift in emphasis, not continuous time-tracking measurements or a rule for every CIO.deloitte.com (opens in a new tab) · deloitte.com (opens in a new tab)

How a CIO differs from a CTO, CDO or CISO

Titles overlap, and the split differs from company to company. CDO can mean chief digital officer or chief data officer, so spell out which role you mean in the brief. In Deloitte's 2026 Global Technology Leadership Study (opens in a new tab), a survey of more than 660 technology leaders at organizations with revenue of US$1 billion or more, 95% of organizations had a CIO or an equivalent role. And 71% had five or more technology leaders in the C-suite, including CTOs, CISOs, chief data and analytics officers and newer roles such as chief AI officer. Among US CIOs who report to the CEO, a separate Deloitte survey published in November 2025 (opens in a new tab) found that 34% have a CTO and 34% a chief digital officer among their direct reports.

So the title does not tell a candidate what the job is. Before the search, decide who owns each area below. In a smaller company one person may hold all of it; a larger company may split some areas off to a separate leader.

If you are still deciding whether you need a full-time CIO at all, a fractional or interim CIO can cover the role while you settle the scope. If AI is the main reason for the hire, compare the CIO role with a chief AI officer first.

Signs the CIO role is missing or set too low

The need for a CIO often shows up as symptoms before anyone names the gap:

• Technical debt grows, and nobody owns the plan to pay it down.
• Vendors set the roadmap, because nobody inside can challenge their proposals.
• Projects stall halfway because IT was brought in after the business case was approved.
• Teams buy their own tools and build workarounds, and data ends up in separate systems that do not agree.
• Security questions reach the board without an executive who can answer them in business terms.

A head of IT who keeps systems running is valuable, but that is a different job. If these symptoms are why you are hiring, the brief needs a strategist and a catalyst as well as an operator.

How the role has changed: what 2025 and 2026 surveys show

Surveys from 2025 and 2026 show how far CIOs have moved toward the business, which is also how candidates will measure your offer.

• Reporting line. In Deloitte's survey of 622 US technology leaders (March to April 2025, published in November 2025), 65% of CIOs reported directly to the CEO, up from 41% a decade earlier. Two-thirds (66%) of those reporting to the CEO said the arrangement put them in a better position to drive business strategy and results, and 36% of CIOs said they managed a P&L.
• How CIOs see themselves. In Foundry's 2026 State of the CIO (opens in a new tab) (662 heads of IT and 249 business respondents), 46% of CIOs described themselves as business leaders who shape technology decisions to drive outcomes. Others saw themselves as consultants (28%), risk assessors (14%), supporting players (8%) or voices of reason (4%). In the same survey, 82% said they were more involved than their business counterparts in leading digital transformation.
• AI. In BCG's research published in February 2025 (opens in a new tab), IT led or co-led generative AI work with the business at 86% of the companies BCG classed as furthest ahead on AI, compared with 54% of those furthest behind. That is a correlation, not proof that the CIO caused the result.

Foundry's five self-descriptions make a good interview question. Ask candidates which one fits them, then ask for an example. Someone who answers "business leader" should be able to name a business result they changed.

The CIO skills and qualities to assess, and how to test them

Long lists of CIO skills can be grouped into eight capabilities. Each one can be tested with evidence from the candidate's past roles.

On negotiation, Christie Struckman, a VP analyst at Gartner, wrote in 2023 (opens in a new tab) that CIOs "must cultivate relationships and influence among C-level executives and vendor leadership, before they are needed". That is a useful reference check: ask peers from a candidate's last company how the candidate worked with them before there was a problem.

Does a CIO need to be technical?

Enough to judge architecture, challenge vendors and earn the respect of the IT team. A CIO does not need to be the best engineer in the company, and a candidate who can only talk about technology will struggle with the strategist and catalyst work.

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Across the selection research reviewed by Sackett and colleagues, structured interviews had higher corrected mean validity than unstructured interviews. These are correlations with job performance, not percentages of successful hires or a forecast for this particular executive role.doi.org (opens in a new tab)

What strong CIO candidates look for

A strong candidate is assessing you as closely as you are assessing them. Pay matters, and so do the terms of the role itself.

For the first approach, connect a candidate's relevant past achievement to the business problem in your brief, so they have a concrete reason to discuss the role. If a search firm handles outreach, give it that connection to use.

A reporting line and a seat in strategy

Most US CIOs in Deloitte's 2025 survey reported to the CEO, and two-thirds of those said it helped them drive strategy and results. Deloitte's 2013 study advised incoming CIOs to negotiate their reporting line and the permission to make changes before accepting the job. If your CIO will report to the CFO or COO, be ready to explain why and how the CIO will take part in strategy decisions.

Decision rights in writing

Vague scope signals a limited role. State what the CIO will decide alone, what they will decide with peers and what goes to you: platform choices, vendor selection, the technology budget, hiring in IT, and the AI and data questions from the table above. A sentence such as "you will own vendor selection and the budget for the sales and marketing systems, and agree the roadmap each quarter with the head of sales" tells a candidate more than "support the technology stack".

A credible package

In the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the computer and information systems manager occupation, the median annual wage was $175,140 in May 2025, and the top 10% earned more than $297,510. Those figures cover the whole occupation, from IT managers to CIOs, so they are context for the offer, not a CIO salary range. A CIO package depends on company size, industry and the bonus and equity on offer. Benchmark it with a compensation survey or your search firm before the first interview, and present the whole package early.

Evidence that the work is real

Candidates want to know what they are walking into. In Deloitte's 2013 study, many incoming CIOs were surprised by how broken IT service delivery was in the companies they joined; one said the company "just did not know how broken it was." Give finalists an honest view of the systems, vendors and budget. What convinces a strong candidate is an approved budget, a named first project and a leadership team that has agreed what the CIO will change.

A clear and quick process

Tell candidates the steps, who they will meet and when they will hear back. Include the CFO, the COO and a revenue leader in the interviews, because the CIO will work with all of them. Avoid four mistakes: framing the role around keeping systems running, using a generic executive interview, leaving pay to the final round and choosing the safest consensus candidate over the one who can lead change.

Define success before the search starts

Before you interview anyone, write down what the CIO must have achieved after 90 days and after a year. Hiring a strong person into a role that was never defined is a mistake I've made myself and seen others make. "If you have a great person that doesn't fit within your organization, you're just setting yourself up for a disaster," as I put it on my podcast in 2020. The fix I described there is a written answer to one question, "what is success at 90 days?", with a plan for how the new person moves from learning the work to owning it.

The same rule applies to the person doing the hiring. You do not need to be a technologist to hire a CIO, but you need enough grasp of what the business needs from its systems to define success and judge the answers. In 2025 I told the productize.co podcast (opens in a new tab) that "there's some level of competency you need in all aspects of the business to be able to hire someone effectively". I went through several painful finance hires before I learned finance myself; after that, when I looked for a fractional CFO, I knew what to look for. My next operations hire worked for the same reason.

Deloitte's 2013 study gives a CIO-specific starting point: an initial plan and a talent assessment by 90 days, early projects and quick wins by 180 days, and a three- to five-year IT roadmap within the first year. It also found that clear, measurable goals mattered more to outcomes than the exact number of days. Set the 90-day priorities from the mandate: stabilizing operations and architecture, establishing strategy and governance, or a defined mix of both.

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The approach described in this article, shown as a visual guide.

Questions to ask CIO candidates

If you are preparing a search, the comparison of CIO and IT executive search firms covers the firms that run them.

What would your CIO need to have achieved at 90 days for you to know the hire was right?