Welcome to the 2024 Global Digital & Technology Officers Organization and Compensation Survey, which examines both organizational structure and compensation for top technology roles.

For this report, Heidrick & Struggles compiled organizational data from a survey fielded in the summer of 2024 of 377 digital and technology leaders in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom, the Middle East, India, Australia, and Hong Kong and Singapore. This year, compensation data is available for respondents in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Most respondents carried the title of chief information officer. Chief technology officers and chief digital and information officers were also among those included.

We hope you enjoy reading the report. As always, suggestions are welcome, so please feel free to contact us with questions and comments.

Executive summary

Once a role confined solely to computers, the top technology officer at many companies has come to have broad responsibilities in public and private companies around the world. The top technology officer, sometimes called a chief technology officer, chief information officer, or chief digital and information officer, is now viewed as a partner to chief executives, other C-suite executives, and business-unit leaders. The role now has a key hand in shaping enterprise strategy and has also become a springboard to the CEO office. 

This broadening of title and responsibility has accelerated over the past five years as companies have focused on digital transformation and as digital expertise has become central to strategy as well as operations. There is hardly an enterprise anywhere on the planet that does not rely on computer software and hardware, from the factory floor to the front office and from product design to the security of sensitive information.

So whatever these leaders’ title, their remit is to infuse digital technology throughout the company—and much more. They partner with a variety of functions and external partners to create products and improve customer experiences; frequently, there is a clear profit and loss statement associated with their roles. 

We have seen in our work, and in the responses to this year’s survey, that digital and technology officers are staying with their companies longer than they have in the past. We believe that the longer technology officer tenure also reflects a desire to be fully credited for the transformation these executives are leading.

Finally, these leaders are of course deeply involved in their companies’ integration of AI, and their views are fairly similar to—though a bit more bullish than—those of their colleagues across the C-suite in adopting it at a measured pace.  Many of these leaders said their companies are piloting AI in some functions, but far fewer indicated that they are using it across all functions. This suggests that AI, though it created more frenzy than many other new technologies, is now following a similar pattern of being adopted by businesses where it can actually add value. 

Download the full report for more.

About the author

Katherine Graham Shannon (kshannon@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ San Francisco office and global head of the Digital and Technology Officers practices.