CTO of, say, US Foods? No, of course not.
This has always confused me in start up land. There will be a full c suite in a company of 10 people, despite that those c suite folks day to day would look nothing like a corporate position.
Just call it what it is instead of inflating titles.
The CTO/lead gets a better title to inflate their ego and (possibly) future earnings.
The company gives the employee something the employee values but costs the employer nothing.
I agree! How many times I got job offers that read basically: "CTO/sole developer". That's inflated and meaningless, like being one of 100 Senior VPs in a bank.
Specifically this could mean as minuscule as "We're using RoR for our website" to more broad like "We need to have sensors in every food package we ship to manage our supply chain and we use IBM IoT platform to do this". The point is have a defined vision with subsequent technology choice behind it. Whether or not you have a Lt that helps drive those decisions is moot.