What does a Technical Head do?
A technical head owns the entire technology function of a company or business unit — the org, the budget, the architecture and the delivery commitments — usually reporting to the CEO, MD or CTO. The title is common in Indian companies and maps to Head of Engineering, Head of Technology or VP Engineering in global org charts.
A technical head usually has around 12–20 yrs of experience and earns typically ₹40L–₹1Cr/yr depending on company size in India. The day-to-day blends Org design, Budget ownership, Engineering strategy and more — this page gives you a ready-to-use technical head job description template you can copy, plus the exact skills and salary employers expect.
Technical Head job description template
Copy the 8 responsibilities, 6 requirements and 8 skills below into your job post, then edit the parts that are specific to your company — pay band, location and reporting line.
Select the text above to copy it manually if the button is unavailable.
What are a Technical Head's key responsibilities?
A technical head is typically responsible for the 8 duties below, which cover the day-to-day work most employers expect the role to own outright. Paste them into your job post as they are, or cut the ones another team already handles — a responsibility list that claims work the hire will not actually do is the fastest way to lose a candidate at offer stage:
- Own the technology budget — headcount, cloud spend, licences and vendor contracts
- Design the engineering org: team structure, reporting lines and leadership hires
- Set quarterly engineering goals and defend them in planning with the CEO and board
- Approve platform, cloud and build-versus-buy decisions across the company
- Hire and manage engineering managers, architects and delivery leads
- Own uptime, security posture and audit or compliance readiness for the tech estate
- Negotiate scope and timelines with product, sales and customer-facing functions
- Present delivery, risk and spend to the executive team in a monthly review
What qualifications does a Technical Head need?
Employers hiring a technical head in India usually ask for the 6 qualifications below, typically alongside 12–20 yrs of experience. Keep only the ones you will genuinely screen on: every extra must-have narrows the pool, and in the Indian market a long mandatory list filters out strong candidates whose background simply reads differently on paper:
- 12+ years in engineering including several years managing managers
- Proven ownership of a technology budget and of vendor negotiations
- Depth in system architecture, cloud cost management and security fundamentals
- Track record of building and retaining engineering teams at scale
- Ability to translate business goals into engineering roadmaps and back again
- Executive communication — board decks, investor diligence, customer escalations
What skills should a Technical Head have?
These are the 8 skills employers name most often on live technical head listings in India. Treat the first few as the ones worth screening for directly and the rest as signals a candidate can pick up on the job — asking for all of them at once is what turns a reasonable role into an unfillable one:
Listing the three or four skills you genuinely screen on — rather than all 8 — is what keeps a technical head posting from filtering out candidates who could do the job.
What does a Technical Head earn in India?
Typical salary (India)
typically ₹40L–₹1Cr/yr depending on company size
Experience range
12–20 yrs
These are typical ranges and vary by city, company and skills. For live, role-specific pay data, see the OnJob salary guide.
Technical Head job description — FAQs
What is the difference between a technical head and a CTO?
A CTO sets technology vision, owns external technical credibility and usually sits on the leadership team as a founder or officer. The technical head runs the function day to day — delivery, org design, budget and hiring. In smaller Indian companies one person holds both titles, and the roles separate as the organisation grows.
Is Technical Head the same as Head of Engineering?
Head of Engineering is the global equivalent of this Indian-English title, and Head of Technology or VP Engineering sit on the same rung. Recruiters treat them as interchangeable, so search every phrasing when job hunting. The real signal is scope: how many engineers report in, and whether budget and hiring authority come attached.
How many people does a technical head manage?
Span varies enormously with company stage. At a Series A startup the function might be twenty engineers reporting through two or three leads; at a mid-size firm it can be a couple of hundred people across managers, architects and QA. Budget authority and the number of managers reporting in matter more than raw headcount.
What does a technical head earn in India?
Pay typically starts near ₹40L per year at funded startups, sits around ₹60L–₹80L at mid-size product companies, and crosses ₹1Cr at large firms where equity forms a big share of the package. Compensation tracks scope — budget size, headcount, and whether the role reports directly to the CEO or board.