During my 10+ year career as a CTO I attended a lot of various meetups of CTOs in Ukraine and found out that this role is very differently understood and implemented in various companies. The question "What should CTO do?" is one of the most asked both by smaller outsourcing companies and by outsourcing companies that experience growth, like Sombra. That's why I would like to share my personal experience of being a CTO of software outsourcing company.

1. sombrainc.com
Role of a CTO
in software outsourcing
company

2. 03
Agenda
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2
3
4
5
Why this topic?
High-level "architecture" of outsourcing company
Role of CTO in
● Sales & Marketing
● Delivery
● HR & Recruiting
Various exceptions to the rule
Summary & takeaways

3. 03
Disclaimers
I’m talking about software outsourcing companies only
I’m not selling you our Fintech services
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2

4. real story from CTO community meetup
Why this topic?
04

5. Chief Sales Officer
● Revenue generated from new clients
Chief Delivery Officer
● Revenue & profit generated from existing clients
● Client satisfaction
Chief HR Officer
● Turnover
● Employee satisfaction
Chief Technical Officer?
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What other roles
do in companies?
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3
4

6. 06
My story at Sombra

7. Quick facts about me
07
Started professional career as Trainee Java engineer in 2007
Worked at 2 product companies for 5 years
Worked at 1 outsourcing company for 1 year
Left outsourcing company to found startup for lawyers which
failed after 1.5 years
After that co-founded Sombra and joined as CTO

8. Quick facts about
the company
08
Founded in 2013
Started from outstaffing 1 Java engineer to 1 client
Now 300 engineers, 32 clients
Ideal clients: mid-size businesses from US, Canada, UK
Important strategy items:
● Constant year-to-year growth
● Service company
● Delivery offices abroad (Latin America, US)

9. Started in 2013 from
selling Java development
Services we added over
time (timeline)
● Web frontend development
● Project management
● QA / AQA
● UX
● Node
● Business Analysis
● DevOps
● .NET
● Mobile native
● Data engineering
● Python
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Short history of
company’s
services
09
2
Outstaffing
Project development
Managed teams
Fintech consulting

10. High-level
“architecture”
of the software
outsourcing company
10
Clients Engineers
Software
outsourcing
company

11. High-level “architecture” of the software
outsourcing company
11
1. Marketing
2. Sales
3. Account Mgmt
5. Resource mgmt
6. Recruiting
7. HR
8. Employer Brand
Potential engineers
4. Delivery Sombra engineers
Potential clients
Existing clients
Client Brand
inbound
outbound
investigate
investigate
talk about
revenue <> value exchange
recruit
talk about
looks for
manage
consult with
speak with
9. L&D
train
requests engineers

12. Main mission of
CTO at Sombra
12
Make clients happy with the
engineering part of our services

13. Important details
CTO is accountable for:
1. Client satisfaction with the engineering
part of services
○ (details to be covered in next slides)
13
Is not accountable for:
2. Communication & other soft skills of engineers
3. IT department & cybersecurity
4. Marketing of our services

14. Functions of each Center of Excellence (CoE) 14
1.Marketing
2. Sales
3. Account Mgmt
Existing clients
Potential
clients
5.Resource mgmt
6. Recruiting
7. HR
8. Employer Brand
Sombra engineers
Potential
engineers
4. Delivery
CTO office
1. Client-facing functions 2. Engineer-facing functions

15. Marketing & Sales support
Account management support
Delivery support
HR support
Recruiting & resource management support
Employer brand support
Product Service management
● Client satisfaction with each of our services
● Adding new services
1
CTO Office main
functions
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2
3
4
5
6
7

16. CTO Office team
Fintech experts team (new service)
● Subject Matter Expert
● Software Architect
● UX Lead
Team of Competence Leads for
each of engineering streams
● Java Competence Lead
● WebJS Competence Lead
● Node Competence Lead
● QA / AQA Competence Lead
● UX Competence Lead
● BA Competence Lead
● .NET Competence Lead
● DevOps Competence Lead
● Data engineering Competence Lead
16

17. CTO Office Team diagram 17
56
Java
53 WebJS
29 QA
11 Node 11 UX 9 .NET 7 BA 6 DevOps 3 Python
2 iOS
0 Android
0 DE
Java Lead
50% FTE
Java Lead
50% FTE
WebJS Lead
20% FTE
WebJS Lead
0%
QA Lead
100% FTE
Node Lead
20% FTE
UX Lead
100% FTE
.NET Lead
20% FTE
BA Lead
100% FTE
DevOps Lead
20% FTE
<no lead>
CTO

18. Managing becomes complex
● Number of people in my team
● Number of contexts
Number of engineers
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Current
challenges
18
2

19. Various exceptions in
other companies
Directly responsible for
● Meeting deadlines & expectations of the client
● Firefighting on client’s projects
● Most technical decisions on the client’s projects (chief
architect role)
● Product(s) of the company
When CTO is accountable for
● IT department and cybersecurity
● Marketing
19

20. Number and type of clients
Number of engineers
Different previous backgrounds of CTO
Company vision for next 5-10 years
● Should company grow?
● Should services change (more complex / more simple)?
● Should company merge or acquire other companies?
● Should we also do product(s)?
1
Summary &
takeaways
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3
4
CTO responsibilities
and KPIs are influenced by:

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Thank you!