While many successful startups are solo projects, you will need to hire some employees to succeed at one point or another. The first employees you hire should fulfill roles crucial to your success, such as sales clerks and IT personnel. Some positions you may overlook that will add specialized value to companies of any size include network engineer, chief marketing manager and hardware technician.

Network Administrator and Engineer

Network administrators maintain the networks that the engineers design and develop. Your network engineer and administrator may be the same for smaller companies just starting to build an IT department. Just know that the bigger your company and network grow, the more complex network monitoring and maintenance will be. Your network administrator and engineer may even represent the entire IT department for small startups, which will need to expand as rapidly as your business does.

Chief Information and Technology Officer

Your Chief Information Officer, CIO, or Chief Technology Officer, CTO, will be the liaison between your IT department and your Chief Executive Officer. The CIO will manage multiple technology, data and information departments and distill those reports to the information your CEO needs during meetings. This management position also approves hardware and software upgrades, the choice of distributed tracing solutions, and much more.

Help Desk Support/Analyst

When an employee or customer experiences an issue, he or she goes to the help desk to resolve it. A help desk support employee or help desk analyst will be the one to take these complaints, decide where to direct the work order, and help resolve the problem. Your analyst will also triage support requests to ensure that your employees are productive and your customers are happy.

Hardware Technician

Arguably the most critical position in your IT department is the hardware technician. This technician’s job is to install, maintain and repair computers and servers throughout the network. He or she will install essential updates to software, address any computer issues you may experience and be what most people think of as “tech support.”

Business Analyst

A business analyst serves as a liaison between the IT department and the rest of the company by analyzing the data, processes and information crucial to solving business problems. He or she will also help ensure that the IT department runs more smoothly by analyzing company trends and generating repair forecasts.

Chief Marketing Officer

Trying to be successful in business without a Chief Marketing Officer, CMO is like trying to use the internet in the 1990s, slow and frustrating. Your CMO will manage the marketing and sales teams, approve advertisement campaigns and be the contact person for press releases and news stories. He or she should have the marketing expertise to determine if your advertising strategies are on point so you can focus on other areas of expertise and still market to new and existing customers.

Customer Service Representative

Customer service representatives such as cashiers, customer service managers, sales clerks and receptionists are essential to running a company in any industry. These positions are your public face and handle daily customer interactions. You will struggle to make sales and retain customers without skilled personnel in your customer relations and service positions.

Many positions within your company will need to be filled as you expand the business from a startup to a large corporation. Not every role is crucial to success at every point along the way. Still, some which can be helpful to startups and vital to larger companies include customer service reps, Chief Information Officers, and hardware technicians. You will also need a Chief Marketing Officer, network administrators and engineers, and business analysts.