Q: Does my business need to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO)?
A: DPOs must be appointed in the case of: (a) public authorities, (b) organizations that engage in large scale systematic monitoring, or (c) organizations that engage in large scale processing of sensitive personal data (Art. 37). If your organization doesn’t fall into one of these categories, then you do not need to appoint a DPO.
The issue however is that for a DPO you need to avoid conflict of interest, as the DPO should be as independent as possible, even though the DPO could be an employee of the company.
Shareholders, C-level execs, employees that establish means and purposes of processing or handle the actual processing cannot be reasonably expected to place the interests of the data subject(s) above those of the company.
See article 38 for reference.