How did Steve Jobs thrive in a technical field with a non-technical background?

Steve did electronics projects with Woz as teenagers before they ever considered making a company. He was heavily into phone phreaking which is not a layman activity.

He wasn't as talented as Woz or Bill Gates at engineering but I don't know how you can call him "not technical".

Fun fact: That was BillG's favourite put down if he thought you didn't know what you were talking about, "I guess your just not very technical".

From interviews and first-hand accounts I've seen, Steve was able to digest very technical ideas and concepts and extract "cliff notes" and first principles from them. Take the example/myth of him visiting Xerox and seeing a GUI interface and mouse for the first time.

Additionally, Apple is and has been a consumer company, so understanding the nitty gritty technical details is not the core concern. Instead, building a premium brand, with a cult like following, and being able to identify market opportunities was his genius.

He was a product star. He could see demand unmet, and guide to a filling of it. He saw the big picture.

The iT industry is full of people who don't have a talent for tech stuff. A common path for them is to get work as a programmer, survive by keeping a knife hidden under their tongue, then get promoted to manager, architect, designer, or recruiter as soon as they can. It also happens in open source software.