Organizations across nearly every industry are in the throes of digital transformation, the ongoing work of embedding digital technology into every corner of business operations rather than treating it as a side project for the IT department. The scale of that effort is enormous: 2025 research from McKinsey found that 89% of large companies globally now have a digital and AI transformation underway, yet those same companies have captured only 31% of the revenue lift and 25% of the cost savings they originally expected. The technology is being deployed, but the results are not following.
Research shows that this gap is a leadership problem, not a technology problem. Programs such as the online Master of Science in Information Technology and Master of Business Administration (MSIT/MBA) Dual Degree offered by Emporia State University (ESU) prepare professionals to excel as digital transformation leaders. The dual-degree curriculum pairs technical depth in systems, data, and infrastructure with core MBA training in strategy, finance, and organizational leadership, giving graduates the cross-functional fluency to translate technology investments into measurable business results.
According to McKinsey’s own analysis of what separates successful transformations from failed ones, fewer than 30% of transformation efforts succeed, and the difference between success and failure rarely comes down to which software or platform a company chose. Gartner’s 2024 CIO survey data puts it even more starkly: only 48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed their business outcome targets. The most commonly cited reason for failure across this research is a persistent gap between technical implementation and business strategy, a gap that a digital transformation leader with credentials in both disciplines is positioned to close.
Digital Transformation Careers: Roles Organizations Are Hiring For Right Now
The demand for digital transformation leaders has produced a distinct set of executive and near-executive titles, each responsible for a different slice of the same problem: making technology investment translate into measurable business outcomes. Tasked with setting digital strategy across an entire enterprise rather than managing IT infrastructure alone, the chief digital officer (CDO) is typically the most transformation-focused of these roles. Compensation reflects that scope: Payscale reports an average base salary of roughly $203,000 for CDOs specifically, with base pay ranging from about $84,000 to $493,000 depending on company size and industry, and total compensation (including bonus and profit sharing) climbing as high as $755,000 for top earners. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which doesn’t track CDO roles as a distinct category but reports on chief executives broadly, puts the median annual wage at $206,420 as of May 2024, with the top 10% earning more than $239,200 — a useful benchmark given that employment of top executives overall is projected to grow 4% from 2024 to 2034.
Below the CDO, organizations are building out a second tier of transformation-specific roles. Vice president of digital transformation and director of technology strategy positions typically report to the CDO or chief information officer (CIO) or chief technology officer (CTO) and own the execution layer: program governance, vendor selection, cross-functional rollout, and change adoption. The digital transformation manager sits closer to the ground, coordinating specific initiatives such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) migrations or process automation projects.
Digital transformation manager pay isn’t tracked as its own category in public wage data. The closest match is the Computer and Information Systems Managers category from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) which shows a median annual wage of $171,200 as of May 2024. These roles tend to function as a proving ground on the way to CDO and CIO titles.
CIO Career Path: The Credentials and Experience That Define Today’s Technology Executives
The modern CIO career path looks meaningfully different from the role a decade ago. Where the CIO once functioned primarily as the steward of infrastructure and uptime, Gartner’s ongoing research shows that today’s CIOs are expected to co-own digital business outcomes alongside line-of-business executives. Gartner has even identified a “Digital Vanguard” cohort of high-performing CIOs whose organizations report a 71% success rate on digital initiatives, compared with 48% enterprise-wide. The defining trait of that cohort is shared accountability between IT and the business rather than IT operating in isolation.
That shift shows up directly in compensation and hiring criteria. CIO base salaries in 2026 commonly range from roughly $170,000 to $350,000 or more at the median, with senior CIOs at larger organizations earning considerably higher total compensation, according to compensation benchmarking from Kore1.
More importantly, for anyone mapping out a career path toward this role, Gartner’s hiring research finds that the qualities large-enterprise CIOs weigh most heavily in candidates include technical depth, relationship management, and a genuine understanding of the business’s commercial arrangements, not technical skill in isolation. That is a credential profile that a single-discipline degree rarely produces on its own, and it is the reason so many rising technology leaders are now pursuing programs that combine both, like ESU’s online Dual MSIT/MBA program.
Why Digital Transformation Requires Both Technical Depth and Business Fluency
Digital transformation is often described as a technology initiative, but the work itself is mostly organizational. Deploying a new platform is the easy part. The hard part is change management, business process redesign, stakeholder alignment across departments that do not naturally cooperate, and a clear line of sight between the technology investment and the business outcome it is supposed to produce.
Harvard Business Review’s analysis of digital transformation value reaches a similar conclusion: while 89% of large companies globally have a digital and AI transformation underway, they have captured only 31% of the expected revenue lift and 25% of the expected cost savings, a gap the authors attribute to the “hands-in-the-dirt” organizational work most companies skip. A leader who can architect a cloud migration but cannot build consensus across finance, operations, and sales will struggle to get that migration adopted, let alone valued.
This is where the credential gap becomes a real business risk. A purely technical master’s degree, such as a standalone MSIT, produces genuine depth in systems, security, cloud architecture, and data, but it may not typically include the financial modeling, strategic planning, and organizational management training that transformation leadership demands. A purely business-focused MBA produces the opposite gap: strong strategic and financial judgment without the technical credibility needed to earn trust from engineering and IT teams, or to ask the right questions when evaluating a technology roadmap.
Gartner’s CIO hiring research bears this out directly, noting that large-enterprise CIOs look for technical skills, business understanding and relationship management together rather than any one of those in isolation. Job posting data reinforces the same pattern at scale: an analysis of nearly 700 digital transformation postings found that business degrees and computer science degrees show up at nearly equal rates in the requirements, a signal that fluency in both languages, not just one, has become the competitive edge for these roles. That dual expectation is precisely the gap a dual-credential graduate is built to close.
How ESU’s Dual MSIT/MBA Prepares Graduates to Lead Transformation Initiatives
Emporia State University’s online Dual MSIT/MBA program blends ESU’s Master of Science in Information Technology curriculum with its Master of Business Administration curriculum in a single accelerated program. Delivered entirely online in seven-week course terms with six start dates per year, the program is designed for working professionals looking to earn their degree without pausing their careers. Students can complete the dual program in as few as 18 months, and because the MSIT and MBA are integrated, graduates leave with 51 credit hours of coursework that develops a comprehensive, in-demand leadership skill set.
The curriculum reflects the same technical-and-business balance that digital transformation roles demand. On the technology side, students work through enterprise architecture, cloud computing and management, database management, and application programming, as well as systems analysis and design, gaining the same hands-on grounding in cloud platforms and data systems that Gartner identifies as critical technical skill areas for digital leaders. On the business side, the MBA core covers managerial economics, advanced financial management, strategic management, and marketing strategy, building the financial and strategic vocabulary that lets a graduate defend a transformation business case in the boardroom.
The program’s Enterprise Architecture course in particular is built around what ESU describes as a CIO-level management perspective, giving students direct practice translating enterprise IT strategy into business-aligned outcomes. Backed by AACSB International accreditation through ESU’s School of Business and Technology, graduates leave the program positioned to compete for CDO, CIO, and digital transformation VP roles with credibility on both sides of the table.
Explore how Emporia State University’s online Dual MSIT/MBA program can prepare you to lead digital transformation initiatives from the boardroom to the data center.
About Emporia State University’s Online Dual MSIT/MBA Program
ESU’s online Dual MSIT/MBA program pairs a Master of Science in Information Technology with a full Master of Business Administration in one accelerated, 51-credit-hour curriculum. Delivered entirely online in seven-week terms with six annual start dates, the program is built for working professionals who want to earn both degrees in as few as 18 months.
Emporia State University’s School of Business and Technology holds accreditation from AACSB International, a distinction earned by a small share of business schools worldwide and one that reflects rigorous standards for curriculum quality, faculty credentials, and student outcomes. That accreditation extends across ESU’s graduate technology and business programs, including the Dual MSIT/MBA.
