The strength of a startup rests on its team. Your startup goals can be made or broken by your tech team, so it's important for a tech startup to have the right team structure. So, the best place to start making inroads into those billion-dollar dreams is to ensure you harness the perfectly structured team to drive you to success.
This guide will show you the most important roles to focus on and give you tips on how to build the best team.
Here we go!
Before we jump to the hierarchy of a tech startup, you must understand the different roles you'd require to run your company in the best way possible.
Here are the most common roles in a tech startup:
C-level executives are frequently members of high management. The most common c-level roles for a tech startup include:
The CEO is the highest-ranking leader in a company. It is his or her job to set the company's overall goals and guide the strategy for getting there. They are responsible for setting goals, organizing resources, making rules and procedures, and making sure that teams work well together.
The CTO is in charge of the technical design and development of a company's products or services. They are in charge of choosing the technology to be used, managing software development projects, overseeing code review processes, and making sure the software meets both customer needs and industry standards.
The COO is an important part of day-to-day operations. He or she manages the customer service and business development teams to make sure everything runs smoothly. They are in charge of making operational policies and procedures that will help the CEO's goals and objectives be met.
The CFO is in charge of financial planning, budgeting, and accounting tasks. For example, the CFO makes budgets and works with the marketing team to come up with plans for promoting the product through different channels, like advertising campaigns. This team is usually made up of software engineers, hardware engineers, firmware and embedded software engineers, data engineers, system architects and designers, DevOps engineers, and quality assurance (QA) engineers.
An engineering team is responsible for designing and building products, services, and systems. This team is usually made up of software engineers, hardware engineers, firmware and embedded software engineers, data engineers, system architects and designers, DevOps engineers, and quality assurance (QA) engineers. The list may vary based on the types of products and services offered.
Let's discuss these roles one by one.
Software Engineers, aka developers, are responsible for developing and maintaining computer applications that meet customer needs. They create the code for applications using programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, or other frameworks to develop apps for mobile platforms and the web. They often use tools like version control systems (Git), Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), unit testing frameworks (JUnit), or machine learning libraries (TensorFlow).
Hardware Engineers are responsible for designing electronic devices such as computers or smartphones. They use CAD tools such as AutoCAD to create detailed designs of components before producing them in a lab with specialized tools such as soldering irons or oscilloscopes.
They are responsible for creating code that runs on embedded devices such as routers or IoT devices. They write the code in languages like C++ or assembly language, depending on the platform they are working on. Before putting the code on a device, they often use debuggers to find bugs in the code.
Data engineers are responsible for creating pipelines that ingest data from various sources into databases in order to organize it according to certain parameters so that it can be used by other teams within an organization or by customers outside of it. Some tools they might use include Hadoop, Apache Spark, HiveQL, or BigQuery, among others.
System Architects/Designers are responsible for overseeing projects from a high-level perspective by determining the best way to design a system based on customer requirements that meet business objectives while also considering scalability and security concerns. Tools they might use include UML modeling programs like StarUML or sequence diagrams which enable them to quickly visualize their system's architecture.
DevOps Engineers are responsible for ensuring software applications run smoothly once deployed into production by managing all aspects of deployment, including continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), and even monitoring performance in production environments with the help of automated tests and scripts after committing code changes into version control systems like GitLab.
QA Engineering is mainly focused on making sure all components within an application work together correctly while also looking out for any potential issues within the user interface, if applicable, before deployment. They might use a combination of manual (manual testing, exploratory testing, etc.) and automated (unit/integration testing, load/performance testing, etc.) testing to assess the quality of an application.
Systems or Cloud Engineers are responsible for ensuring the infrastructure that supports the applications is running optimally and securely. This often includes tasks such as server provisioning and configuration management, setting up firewalls or load balancers, and monitoring server usage against resource requirements. Additionally, they will often be required to ensure systems are compliant with relevant regulations like PCI-DSS.
A design team at a tech startup is in charge of creating visually appealing and intuitive user experiences. The team is made up of people with different jobs who work together to make designs that are visually appealing and consistent across products, websites, and apps.
Here are some of these roles:
They are in charge of understanding user needs and developing design solutions that meet those needs through the creation of a product. This usually includes tasks like making wireframes, prototypes, and journey maps to make user experiences that are easy to understand. For example, they may use tools like Figma and Adobe Creative Suite to create mockups; InVision to create interactive prototypes; or Sketch, Figma, or Adobe XD for wireframes.
UI designers are responsible for visualizing a product's interface. This usually involves making artwork, choosing typefaces and colors, designing icons and other graphic elements, and making sure that all the visual parts of the interface follow branding guidelines. They may use tools like Sketch or Figma to create artwork, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign for complex graphics, or Invision Studio or Figma for prototyping animation effects.
UX researchers are responsible for understanding user behavior in order to inform design decisions. This often includes tasks such as conducting interviews with users or stakeholders, observing how users interact with an interface or product in the wild, running tests on usability or accessibility issues, and analyzing data from user surveys or A/B tests. They may use tools like Hotjar for heatmaps or surveys; Balsamiq & press releases; advertising campaigns via traditional media & online platforms such as Google Ads & social media networks like Facebook & Twitter; etc. so that potential customers become aware of brand offerings leading to higher conversion rates over time.
This team provides technical support if any queries related to the usage of the website, mobile application, or any other digital offering arise from the customer's end, which could be solved via direct communication channels provided like a call center, chatbot, live chat, or email support, among others.
Examples of roles within this team include technical support, training team who educate users about how they can get the maximum benefit out of a certain feature provided by a solution, etc.
The hierarchical structure shown above indicates the ideal tech team structure. However, in the real world, you might find cross-team interactions. For example, in order to reduce churn, the design team may be required to report to the CMO for a period of time.Tech startups can gain access to pre-screened candidates who are eager to join the team.
Hence, if you’re looking forward to creating or scale-up your IT team, sign up for our AI platform to get high-performing tech teams on demand.
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