I’m moving into a new role at Node4, as a vCTO (the “v” is for virtual).

It formalises the type of work I’ve found myself doing more of over time — working with clients to shape technology decisions, connect ambition to outcomes, and make sense of increasingly complex landscapes. The change of role adds increased focus (and accountability).

It’s also prompted me to look back at where that started.

A conversation at the wrong time

In May 2017, I pitched to the founding directors at risual and asked to be their CTO.

I understood what the role required. What I hadn’t fully grasped was the context we were operating in. 2017 was a difficult year, and any non-billable role was an overhead that had to be justified very carefully.

I was thinking with an enterprise mindset in a small to medium-sized business and, in doing so, showed that I wasn’t ready.

Becoming part of a larger organisation

When risual was acquired by Node4, we became part of a much larger organisation with an established CTO. One of the directors that I’d pitched to years earlier introduced me to him. He saw it as fulfilling a promise he had made — I’d never considered it a promise, but I did appreciate the recognition.

Ultimately, that led to a move into Node4’s Office of the CTO (OCTO), where I’ve spent the last three years.

The work has varied — as has the leadership of the function — but it has consistently involved working across technology, strategy, and customer engagement. It’s also drawn on earlier parts of my career, including time in the Fujitsu UK and Ireland OCTO, management experience from running a large technology practice, stepping back into solution and enterprise architecture, before leading a team of architects.

Individually, those roles were quite different. Together, they start to make more sense, and we’ll come back to my “red thread” in a moment.

What a vCTO does

The vCTO is not “the CTO”. As I wrote in a recent post, the CTO role itself varies widely depending on context. This is one of those variations. For me, in this role, it means:

• Working with customers at a senior level to understand their goals, constraints, and priorities.
• Shaping technology roadmaps that align to business outcomes.
• Translating between business ambition and technical possibility.
• Working closely with account teams and service delivery teams to make sure ideas turn into outcomes.
• Building trusted relationships with customers and advocating for them within Node4.

It sits between strategy and delivery — close enough to execution to stay grounded, but focused on direction rather than implementation.

The red thread

There is a red thread running through all of this.

That 2017 conversation wasn’t wrong, but it was early (even if I didn’t think so at the time). What’s changed since then isn’t just experience. I knew I was becoming broader and shallower in my technology knowledge, but I’ve since realised I was also learning how technology leadership works.

And I’m still learning.

This move to a vCTO role feels like the right next step. Now I need to turn the theory into practice.