What Is a VP of IT? Role Breakdown and Career Path

A VP of IT, or Vice President of Information Technology, is a senior executive responsible for overseeing an organization’s IT strategy and operations. The VP of IT plays a major role in aligning technology initiatives with overall business objectives, ensuring that IT supports and drives the company’s success.

It can take professionals 15–20 years to reach VP-level roles at larger enterprises. At startups, however, the path is often faster, sometimes just seven years. While VP is a senior title, it is not always a C-level position; only those with specific ‘C’ titles, such as CTO or EVP with executive responsibilities and voting rights, are considered C-level.

The VP’s roles and responsibilities include aligning technology goals with business impact, shaping IT strategy, and staying current with new technology. A strong vision is essential for the VP of IT to guide technological initiatives, inspire teams, and ensure IT efforts are aligned with the company’s long-term objectives.

For example, at Nextiva, our VP of Information Technology leads the tech strategy and manages operations across our global communications network. They also partner with the legal and Information Security (InfoSec) teams to oversee compliance.

In this article, we’ll break down the key roles of the VP of IT, how they vary across organizations, and what skills and experience are most valuable for succeeding in the position. This serves as a job description for the VP of IT role, outlining its responsibilities, qualifications, and strategic importance.

Vice President of IT Key Responsibilities

While every organization has unique goals, most VP of Information Technology roles require similar core skills. Effective VPs of IT often focus on the needs of their teams to drive success. Below, we’ll break down five key areas that define the VP of IT role, both in your day-to-day responsibilities and in the bigger picture of your long-term success.

These skills also lay the foundation for what’s next, like stepping into a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) or Chief Information Officer (CIO) role.

Strategic planning 

Every executive needs to think long-term. For a vice president of technology role, this means designing a tech strategy that supports the company’s goals and business needs now and in the future.

This includes assessing the maturity of your tech stack, identifying scalability constraints, and ensuring that the architecture can evolve with emerging technologies and trends.

It’s not just tech strategy either. You’ll also need to develop new policies and procedures and assemble the right team to implement your strategy. Developing both strategic and technical skills is essential to adapt to evolving technology trends and maintain effective leadership.

Program management 

The IT team ensures employees have the tools they need to do their best work. A VP of IT leads this endeavor by aligning the right tools with every stage of the business and looking for new ways to improve performance through technology and drive operational efficiency across departments. The head of IT is also responsible for overseeing smooth IT operation throughout the organization, ensuring that day-to-day IT processes support business goals and effective service delivery.

CX, or customer experience, is a great example. Nextiva’s 2025 CX Trends Report shows that 43% of respondents see new technologies as a key factor in creating a favorable view of CX at the company. Along with the CX team, the IT VP manages the rollout of new tech, like training AI agents or setting up automated workflows in the contact center to support operational excellence.

Team leadership 

Leadership at the VP level isn’t just about managing people or assigning tasks. It’s about building a system that allows teams to do their best work and fosters continuous improvement. One way to think about it comes from Zhang Ruimin, founder and former CEO of Haier.

During an interview with McKinsey, Ruimin says:

“Leaders of other enterprises often define themselves as captains of the ship, but I think I’m more the ship’s architect or designer. That’s different from a captain’s role, in which the route is often fixed and the destination defined.”

Whether it’s building a productive team or planning your strategy and frameworks, you’re essentially showing people how to be prepared for the unknown. Today, that might mean navigating AI tools, while tomorrow it could be something entirely different, such as new security threats or emerging platforms.

This helps teams stay adaptable while continuing to foster innovation. Encouraging the development of new ideas within the IT team is essential for driving innovation and maintaining a competitive edge in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

IT infrastructure

Another of the IT department’s roles and responsibilities is overseeing the systems that keep everything running, such as the hardware, software, networks, cloud platforms, and data centers. As the vice president, you won’t be handling the day-to-day maintenance, but you will be making the big calls.

This includes decisions about which cloud architecture to adopt, how to structure systems for scalability and data backups, and ensuring everything meets security and compliance standards. 

You’ll also be responsible for ensuring the stability and scalability of IT operations, including system performance and uptime, so that the business can run smoothly without interruption.

Policy and security

The VP of IT is the primary architect of your company’s technology governance framework. This is both your roadmap and guardrail for ensuring that technology investments manage risk effectively and deliver real value. 

For this, you’ll need to work closely with legal, compliance, and security teams to develop and enforce security policies — ensuring compliance with regulations like SOC 2, HIPAA, or GDPR. You might also need to perform risk assessments to plug any security gaps and create a continuity plan for emergencies.

Budget and vendor management

As VP of IT, you’re not just leading tech. You’re also managing vendor relationships, one of the company’s biggest budgets. According to Deloitte’s 2023 Global Technology Leadership Survey, the average technology budget now represents 5% of company revenue. In tech-forward industries like banking and telecommunications, that number can go over 9%. 

Depending on the organization’s structure, this budget is often shared across the VP of IT, CIO, and CTO roles. It’s also commonly reviewed alongside executives, such as the Chief Financial Officer, to ensure alignment with overall financial planning. As a large cut goes to vendors, you’ll be responsible for negotiating enterprise-wide software agreements and consolidating software assets across departments.

As VP, you play a key role in optimizing the use of financial, technological, and human resources to maximize value from vendor relationships and technology investments.

Qualifications Needed

As the VP’s roles and responsibilities span both technical expertise and business strategy, you’ll need to be good at both. This requires the ability to understand the language of engineers and executives and connect the dots between both.

Skills 

At this level, companies look for strong leadership combined with technical expertise. As we’ve seen earlier, you’ll need a mix of technical understanding and executive-level soft skills. This includes:

• Technical expertise: You should have a deep understanding of cloud platforms, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and enterprise tooling like VoIPs, CRMs, and more.
• Strategic thinking: You’ll need to balance new tech adoption with legacy systems, budget constraints, and evolving business goals.
• Leadership: You’ll be structuring the IT team and not just by hiring top talent. You’ll also be supporting ongoing professional development and helping them do their best work.
• Problem solving skills: Ability to resolve complex technical and organizational challenges.
• Excellent communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills are essential for influencing executives, leading teams, and articulating how technology aligns with business needs.
• Change management: You should know how to lead your organization through complex technological shifts such as ERP migrations, AI implementations, or infrastructure overhauls. 
• Stakeholder influence: You have to confidently build cross-functional alignment, ensuring teams from legal, marketing, and beyond are on the same page when it comes to shared technology goals.
• Project and financial management: You’ll need a deep understanding of total cost of ownership, ROI modeling, and cost optimization strategies so you can prove the business value of tech investments.

Industry-specific tech fluency: Depending on your field, you might also need to upskill or get certified in specific topics. For example:

• In healthcare: Laboratory information systems (LIS), clinical workflows, and FDA/PHI compliance
• In energy and utilities: SCADA systems, IoT for smart grids, GIS mapping, and environmental compliance
• In finance: Experience with core banking systems, data governance, and regulatory compliance (PCI DSS and SOX)

Education

This is where you build your core tech skills, starting with a college degree, then leveling up with certifications as you grow and specialize.

• Bachelor’s degree: A degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field is typically required. This will give you the technical grounding needed for a career in information technology.
• Master’s degree: During your graduate program, you have two options. You can specialize with a Master’s in Information Systems, or Cybersecurity, or complement your technical background with a business-focused degree like an MBA in Business Administration or a Master’s in Technology Management. 
• Certifications: Relevant certifications are a great way to build credibility and stay sharp as tech evolves. Start by deepening your knowledge in core areas like security, compliance, or cloud platforms. Then expand into emerging tech, project management, or analytics.

Experience 

Most VP of IT job descriptions come with phrases like “oversee company-wide digital transformation initiatives,” “drive automation and system modernization initiatives,” and “develop and enforce security policies.” This essentially means three things:

• Strategic leadership: You’ve built and executed multi-year IT strategies, managed large technology budgets, and led cross-functional teams.
• Technology governance and security: You’ve implemented IT governance models like ITIL or COBIT and planned risk management and disaster recovery strategies.
• Digital transformation: You’ve modernized legacy systems, managed enterprise-wide rollouts of tools, and performed ERP or CCaaS upgrades.

Tools and technologies

At the VP level, you’re expected to shape your organization’s technology stack. Here are the key categories:

• Collaboration tools (e.g., Nextiva, Slack): These tools power customer experience and internal communications, particularly for distributed organizations or remote teams.
• ITSM Platforms (e.g., ServiceNow, Freshservice): Core for asset management and SLAs, where you’ll oversee IT service tickets and incident response.
• Cloud Services (e.g., AWS, Azure): As infrastructure shifts to the cloud, you’ll make architectural decisions, manage spend, and drive scalability and availability.
• Analytics and AI (e.g., Snowflake, Power BI): You’ll help your company make smarter decisions with integrated data pipelines, reporting, and automation.
• Cybersecurity (e.g., Okta, Palo Alto): You’ll work with CISOs and security teams to implement identity management, endpoint protection, and compliance tools.
• Enterprise Software (e.g., Salesforce, SAP): As the lead on enterprise tooling strategy, you’ll be involved in governance, contract negotiations, and org-wide rollouts, especially for CRM, ERP, and business communication tools.

You’ve probably used many of these tools earlier in your career, maybe even leading a CRM rollout or managing a hybrid cloud migration. Now, you also need to evaluate them strategically. Think in terms of:

• Scalability: Will this support future growth without major rework?
• ROI and cost effectiveness: Are you seeing measurable business value (not just IT efficiency)?
• Risk and compliance: Are you reducing exposure or introducing new vulnerabilities?

Salary Expectations 

As of 2025, the average salary for a VP of IT in the United States is $187,761 per year, with most roles falling between $125,491 and $280,929. That’s around $80.45 an hour or $13,294 a month.

However, if you’re open to relocating, salaries in top-paying cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, and Mercer Island can exceed $300,000, well above the national average.

If you’re looking at specific industries, Dice reports a +2.2% YoY salary growth for professionals working in the tech industry. AI-related roles pay approximately 17.7% more, especially when held by senior leaders such as VPs, CIOs, and CTOs.

Mapping Out the VP of IT Career Path

If you’re planning your path to a VP of IT role, there are three common paths: the traditional corporate ladder, the startup route, or a hybrid one that starts in startups and transitions into corporate.

Traditional corporate 

For many professionals in information technology jobs, the traditional corporate ladder is the most structured career path. It offers steady growth through management positions and prepares you for senior roles like Vice President of Information Technology.

• IT Support Specialist or Junior Software Developer (0-2 years) 
• Systems Administrator or Mid-Level Software Developer (2-5 years)
• Senior Systems Engineer or Senior Software Developer (5-8 years)
• IT Manager or Technical Lead (8-12 years) 
• Senior IT Manager or Principal Engineer (12-15 years)
• IT Director (15-20 years)
• VP of IT

Startup

The startup route can accelerate your career path if you thrive in fast-moving environments. Here, the Vice President Information Technology role often comes sooner, since smaller companies need strong leadership to scale business operations quickly.

• Software Developer or IT Generalist (0-3 years)
• Senior Developer or IT Lead (3-6 years)
• Head of Engineering or IT Director (6-10 years)
• VP of IT 

Startup to corporate

Some IT professionals begin in startups to gain hands-on experience with technology operations and then transition into larger enterprises. This hybrid path blends entrepreneurial problem solving skills with exposure to corporate strategy, ultimately positioning you for executive roles like Information Technology Vice President.

• Software Developer or IT Generalist at a startup (0-3 years) 
• Senior Developer or IT Lead at a startup (3-6 years)
• Head of Engineering at a startup (6-10 years)
• IT Director at a startup or mid-size company (10-13 years)
• Senior IT Director at a mid-size company  or VP of IT at a startup (13-16 years)
• VP of IT at a large enterprise

Power IT Leadership With the Right Tools

Whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder or coming from a startup background, your past leadership roles, such as an IT Director or even an IT manager, can impact your success at the VP level. Build that foundation intentionally, and you can succeed as the VP of IT and even position yourself for the next step: the CIO.

Also, once you’re in the seat, early wins matter. And one area where IT leaders can make a visible impact quickly is CX technology. In fact, according to Nextiva’s 2025 CX Trends Report, 96% of company leaders say CX is a key driver of business outcomes. 

That’s where Nextiva fits in. Our AI-powered platform can help high-tech organizations simplify communications infrastructure, unify customer interactions, and scale customer support.

FAQs