An International Women’s Day feature with insights from Signe Roesgaard-Gran, CTO at Puzzel.
The tech industry continues to accelerate. New architectures, AI-driven products, and rising customer expectations are constantly reshaping what’s possible. But behind every technical shift are people making decisions — about priorities, trade-offs, culture, and direction.
From a CTO's perspective, leadership in tech today is about far more than architecture or delivery speed. It’s about how decisions are made, how risk is understood, and how diverse perspectives strengthen long-term value creation.
Turning technical potential into business value
Becoming a CTO was not a fixed career plan for Signe. Her path evolved through a consistent interest in solving complex problems.
“What pulled me into technical leadership was solving complex problems and seeing ideas translate into real business outcomes,” she explains. “Technology on its own doesn’t create value. It creates potential. Value happens when technology, product, and business are aligned.”
That alignment sits at the core of her leadership philosophy. The role of a CTO is not only to ensure technical excellence, but to convert capability into measurable impact. That means building lean, empowered teams who test assumptions early, move with purpose, and focus on outcomes rather than activity.
What strong technical leadership actually requires
The CTO role is often associated with code and architecture. Those matter. But Signe sees the core responsibility differently.
“The real responsibility is decision-making under constraints,” she says.
Technology leadership sits at the intersection of systems thinking and commercial judgement. Architectural shortcuts influence future cost-to-serve. Product decisions affect technical debt. Speed can strengthen competitiveness or create fragility.
“The most dangerous failure is not a bug. It is scaling the wrong thing, or scaling the right thing on a foundation that cannot sustain it.”
Strong leadership requires understanding how decisions compound over time. A small misalignment today can become operational risk tomorrow.
Leaders need enough distance to see the system as a whole, while staying close enough to understand the trade-offs in front of them. For Signe, leadership consistently comes back to four questions:
- What are we building, and why?
- Why now?
- At what risk?
- At what long-term cost?
Those questions become even more important as complexity increases.
Leading in the AI era: speed, stakes, and responsibility
AI has increased development speed. It has not reduced complexity. If anything, it has raised both the pace and the stakes.
And this changes what teams need from leadership.
“Modern technology teams need clarity, challenge, and empowered ownership,” Signe says.
High-performing teams are not defined by how much they build, but by how deliberately they build. Clear priorities are protected. Assumptions are challenged early. Teams are trusted with ownership and held accountable for outcomes. Work is measured by impact, not volume.
Effective leaders, she explains:
- Set clear priorities and protect focus
- Give teams real ownership and expect accountability
- Encourage early challenge of assumptions
- Connect daily work to meaningful outcomes
- Have the courage to stop initiatives that do not create value
“In the AI era, this discipline becomes even more important,” Signe says. “The number of things organisations can build is expanding quickly. Building responsibly requires clarity about risk, timing, trade-offs, and long-term cost.”
Empowerment without clarity creates chaos. Clarity without ownership creates disengagement. Sustainable performance sits in the balance between the two.
AI, influence, and representation
As AI becomes embedded in products and workflows, influence concentrates. The people deciding what to build, what data to use, and what trade-offs to accept are shaping systems that scale globally.
Yet representation within AI remains uneven. According to the World Economic Forum, women make up roughly 30% of the AI-related workforce globally. And research from Harvard University suggests women have around 22% lower odds of using generative AI tools than men.
At the same time, data from Deloitte shows that women working in tech appear to be moving beyond gen AI experimentation and into using it for projects and tasks faster than their male counterparts.
For Signe, this is where the leadership conversation connects directly to AI.
“AI increases leverage. That makes it even more important that access to experimentation is broad, and that different perspectives help shape decisions early. Otherwise we risk scaling narrow thinking.”
As AI becomes embedded in everyday workflows, the people experimenting with it today will influence how it is applied tomorrow. Leadership therefore carries responsibility not only for what is built, but for who gets to shape it.
Why diversity strengthens technical decisions
In technical environments, debate is healthy. The best solutions rarely come from one perspective; they emerge when assumptions are tested.
Diverse teams — including gender diversity — reduce groupthink. They widen the lens through which problems are approached. And in technology, where decisions can scale globally, that breadth matters.
“Homogeneous teams are the comfortable trap. Diverse teams are harder at first, but they are more adaptive, more resilient, and usually better over time,” Signe says.
Research consistently shows that diverse leadership teams outperform less diverse ones. But beyond performance metrics, diversity strengthens resilience. It creates cultures where challenging ideas is encouraged, not avoided.
Technical leaders, regardless of gender, also shape the environment in which others perform.
“Leaders set the conditions for performance. Inclusion is not lowering standards. It’s removing friction that prevents capable people from contributing fully, and making challenge safe while keeping expectations clear.”
Closing the gender gap
There has been progress. More women are entering technical roles, and more organisations are actively working on inclusion.
But senior technical leadership still looks very different.
According to Accenture, women represent only 18% of CIOs and CTOs. In the tech industry specifically, McKinsey’s 2024 analysis shows women hold just 11% of executive positions.
Signe reflects: “There’s still a pipeline imbalance, but representation isn’t only about numbers. Some highly capable women wait longer before stepping into roles where they don’t feel fully ready. At the same time, many organisations reward confidence signals more than decision quality. That can influence who gets promoted.”
Closing the gender gap requires more than encouraging individuals to step forward. It requires structural change.
For Signe, that means:
- Hiring and promotion criteria that reward contribution and decision quality, not style
- Offering early stretch opportunities, not only selecting those who already appear “ready now”
- Being brave enough to hire people with different backgrounds and perspectives than the last hire
Representation in technical leadership doesn’t happen on its own. It improves when companies make conscious, consistent choices about who they hire and promote.
Advice for women entering or growing in tech
For women starting out in technical careers, the path can feel unclear. But technical leadership rarely follows a straight line. Progression is rarely about perfect preparation. It is about judgement, responsibility, and a willingness to step into ambiguity.
As Signe puts it:
“Senior roles aren’t about knowing everything. They’re about making decisions under uncertainty and creating clarity for others.”
Waiting until every requirement feels mastered can slow growth.
“If you wait until you feel fully ready, you’ll likely wait too long. Growth often means stepping into responsibility slightly before comfort.”
For those considering a future in technology more broadly, her message is equally direct.
“If you’re curious about how the world works and how problems can be solved differently, tech is one of the most powerful fields you can choose.”
AI will reshape industries, organisations, and everyday life. The people shaping those systems influence how responsibly they evolve and how widely their benefits are distributed.
Final reflections
Technology will continue to evolve quickly. That is unlikely to change.
What will matter is how leaders respond — how deliberately they make decisions, how clearly they set priorities, and how intentionally they design progression and opportunity within their teams.
Sustainable impact is rarely accidental. It’s built through consistent judgement, responsible experimentation, and leadership that balances speed with long-term thinking.
About Signe Roesgaard-Gran, CTO at Puzzel
Signe leads the development of Puzzel’s AI-first customer experience platform and works with engineering and product teams across multiple countries to build scalable, secure solutions that turn technology into real business value. With more than 20 years in the software industry, she has extensive experience leading cloud, product, and technology transformations.
