Around 93% of Indian chief technology officers (CTOs) are increasingly focused on aiding organizations in adjusting to future work trends, as per a LinkedIn report. The study also found that 79% of CTOs have taken on new tasks that were not part of their responsibilities a year ago. Moreover, 84% of CTOs believe their roles are currently being redefined in real-time.
“As their responsibilities continue to evolve, CTOs are also navigating growing expectations around AI implementation and business impact,” stated the report. A significant 79% of respondents mentioned that their roles are evolving faster than their companies can make decisions. Additionally, 56% highlighted the challenge of balancing long-term AI transformation with short-term performance demands as a major leadership hurdle.
Malai Lakshmanan, Head of India Engineering at LinkedIn, emphasized, “With over 9 in 10 Indian CTOs acknowledging that their role has shifted toward helping organizations adapt to the future of work, technology leadership today extends far beyond managing systems and infrastructure.” He added, “As AI adoption moves from experimentation to scale, success depends as much on people as it does on technology. Employees need the skills and confidence to make AI part of how they work every day, which is why closer collaboration between CTOs and talent leaders has become essential.”
The report highlighted that organizations deriving the most value from AI will be those investing heavily in workforce readiness and continuous learning. Notably, ‘Prompt engineer’ and ‘AI engineer’ were identified as the fastest-growing roles in India. Furthermore, 81% of CTOs are under pressure to accelerate AI adoption faster than they can effectively measure its impact.
Regarding partnerships, the report noted that 51% of CTOs consider stronger CTO-CHRO collaborations as the most critical factor in building an effective AI-enabled workforce. It was also revealed that 89% of CTOs are closely collaborating with their CHROs.
