Meet the Highest Paid Information Technology Executives of 2024

The median pay for CTOs rose 30.81% in 2024 from the previous year, to roughly $2.4 million, according to the firm’s review of 3,930 public companies.

The base compensation for CIOs, meanwhile, is growing by roughly 20% to 30% according to Martha Heller, chief executive of IT executive recruiting firm Heller Search Associates. That’s similar to findings from executive recruiter and consulting firm Korn Ferry, which said total compensation for CIOs is increasing by 15% to 25%.

The 10 top-paid, currently employed IT executives, according to C-Suite Comp’s data, are from a variety of sectors, including financial services, retail, healthcare and logistics. 

Some of the companies making the biggest payouts include financial services giants Wells Fargo and Visa, the warehouse-club chain Costco Wholesale, and healthcare products seller Solventum. Four of the CIOs are women. All but two of the companies—healthcare staffing firm AMN Healthcare Services and Lineage, the world’s largest refrigerated-warehousing provider—are in the S&P 500.

One factor driving higher CIO and other tech execs’ pay is the importance of AI for businesses—whether using the technology inside their organizations or deploying it to transform their products and services for customers. And there has been mounting pressure on technology leaders to show AI can produce business results.

“The reason total compensation is rising is because fear, uncertainty, doubt and desperation has entered the board and executive suite,” Heller said. “They finally, with a push in AI, understand that this CIO role is important.”

Seeing double (or triple)

Another reason CIO compensation is going up: These technology executives are simply taking on more work, and with it, adding more titles.

CIOs, traditionally relegated to managing back office information-technology systems like data centers, cloud computing and business software, continue to take an increasing share of responsibility for business leadership.

“Technology leaders have wised up,” said Alyse Egol, a senior client partner of Korn Ferry’s digital, technology and security officers practice. “They’re saying, ‘My value is above and beyond just keeping the machine running.’”

For the CIOs taking home the biggest paychecks, that comes with an increase in the number of titles they hold. 

Seven of the 10 top-paid CIOs have more than one title, with six holding the dual titles of CIO and chief digital officer. Two of the top-paid CIOs also hold the title chief transformation officer. FedEx’s Sriram Krishnasamy holds the titles of chief digital and information officer, and chief transformation officer. AMN Healthcare’s Mark Hagan holds the titles of chief information officer and chief digital officer, and in 2024, held additional responsibilities for operations before the arrival of its CFO and COO in November 2024, the company said.

Those roles tend to be more wide-ranging than traditional CIO roles, with added responsibility for business outcomes as a result of setting tech strategy, executive headhunters say.

“From a budget perspective, it’s two functional leaderships for the price of one,” said Heller. “When somebody reports to a CEO and they have a bunch of different titles, it means the CEO is considering them to be a partner.”

At the same time, not all tech roles at large enterprises are always held by one person.

Half of the over 600 senior-level U.S. technology leaders recently surveyed by Deloitte said they have four or more tech C-suite leaders at their organization. Deloitte is a sponsor of CIO Journal.

And the companies that do employ several tech execs tend to spread out their paychecks between technology leaders, putting a damper on those executives’ compensation, said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of consulting firm Janco Associates.

AI confusion

While AI has boosted the paychecks of some CIOs, Korn Ferry’s Egol said it’s not yet clear for every company how to tie AI projects with tech execs’ compensation.

“Companies are still trying to figure out what to do with it, and who has the real experience,” she said. “The jury’s still out about how it’s really going to tie into compensation in the long run.”

Some tech executives, especially when they have responsibility for AI initiatives, are in what Heller calls “the messy middle.” 

That’s the challenge of being stuck in the midst of educating boards and CEOs about AI, while keeping core IT systems running, getting corporate data in shape for AI and updating legacy tech systems.

A big challenge is that AI is still new as a technology, so CIOs and other tech leaders need to be storytellers of the tech, Heller said.

“Learn to tell the story of AI to every single person around you in a way that is meaningful to them, and furthers the vision of the company,” Heller added.

Write to Belle Lin at belle.lin@wsj.com