Hey, CTO of a healthcare company here, been doing the CTO thing for over a decade, and in tech leadership for nearly three.
My advice is to work to find a partner that has both deep technical experience (they should write code most days) and practical business experience. That's hard to do, but unless you can, I think you're better off not bringing dev in-house.
Whatever that person's title is, make sure they have some skin in the game. They should be able to understand business goals and recommend technical strategies to meet them.
I suggest finding someone who is at a point in their life and career where they are not using the opportunity to build their resume, but are instead focused on the success of your business.
It takes an experienced leader to resist the pressure from hype marketing and developers to use the new shiny, and instead focus on software that will have a shelf life of 5-10 years.
There are seemingly irrelevant technical choices that you won't understand (like the choice of a UI framework) that can end up costing you millions in "framework churn" (I've directly experienced this several times). This is where it takes a leader that is aligned with business goals rather than interesting or popular tech-of-the-moment to make the tough and unpopular calls.
Technology is the beating heart of your company. Evaluate your technical partner with the same rigour you would use for your cardiologist. You're placing an enormous amount of trust, and I'm not being hyperbolic when I say the wrong decision can cause your company to flatline.
My advice is to work to find a partner that has both deep technical experience (they should write code most days) and practical business experience. That's hard to do, but unless you can, I think you're better off not bringing dev in-house.
Whatever that person's title is, make sure they have some skin in the game. They should be able to understand business goals and recommend technical strategies to meet them.
I suggest finding someone who is at a point in their life and career where they are not using the opportunity to build their resume, but are instead focused on the success of your business.
It takes an experienced leader to resist the pressure from hype marketing and developers to use the new shiny, and instead focus on software that will have a shelf life of 5-10 years.
There are seemingly irrelevant technical choices that you won't understand (like the choice of a UI framework) that can end up costing you millions in "framework churn" (I've directly experienced this several times). This is where it takes a leader that is aligned with business goals rather than interesting or popular tech-of-the-moment to make the tough and unpopular calls.
Technology is the beating heart of your company. Evaluate your technical partner with the same rigour you would use for your cardiologist. You're placing an enormous amount of trust, and I'm not being hyperbolic when I say the wrong decision can cause your company to flatline.