Why Scale-Ups Are Stopping Their Search for a CTO and Hiring a VP of Engineering Instead

One of my clients called me a few months ago.

He’d just raised €15M. His founding CTO was brilliant — a real builder who had coded everything from scratch.

The problem: he now needed to go from 8 to 40 engineers in 12 months.

“I think I need a new CTO.”

That wasn’t what he needed.

What he needed was a VP of Engineering.

The confusion between the two profiles is costly. And it’s very common in FR/BE scale-ups.

The CTO holds the long-term technology vision. He makes structural architecture decisions, represents the company externally — with enterprise clients, investors, talent — and sits at the interface between tech and the board.

The VP of Engineering is about delivery, cadence, and quality. He recruits the team, builds the processes and engineering culture, and manages the transition from 8 to 40 engineers without breaking everything along the way.

In the early years, the CTO does both. That’s normal. It’s even a strength.

But beyond a certain stage, forcing a founding CTO to become a VP of Engineering often makes both of them miserable — him and his teams.

The data is clear in the FR/BE market. Scale-ups in hypergrowth — Series A and B — have massively hired VP Engs over the past 18 months. Many of them keep their founding CTO on vision and external matters, and bring in a VP Eng to own internal execution. The ones who confuse the two profiles lose 6 to 12 months of delivery. And often their CTO along with it.

This isn’t about ego or hierarchy.

It’s about what your team needs right now, not in 3 years.

If you’re scaling your tech team, ask yourself one simple question:

Is your problem “where are we going?” or “how do we get there?”

The answer determines which profile to hire.