A confidential Fortune 500 company is launching a new AI innovation group and is seeking a founding Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to build and lead a cloud-native, AI-native software platform. This is a hands-on leadership role requiring deep technical expertise, startup agility, and enterprise-scale execution.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead the design and implementation of an AI-native platform in a hybrid cloud environment
- Define technical strategy and architectural roadmap
- Build and scale the engineering organization from 10 to 100+ engineers
- Translate business requirements into scalable, composable technical solutions
- Collaborate across product, architecture, security, and infrastructure teams
- Drive DevOps, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure-as-code practices
- Lead the development of APIs, platform components, and full-stack features
- Oversee AI/ML systems including model deployment, inference optimization, and workflow orchestration
- Ensure technical excellence, speed, and innovation in a high-growth environment
Required Experience:
- 10+ years in software engineering leadership
- 3+ years as CTO, VP Engineering, or equivalent in a high-growth tech company
- Experience building and scaling product engineering teams and technical organizations
- Background in startup or venture-backed environments, ideally with a successful exit
- Deep expertise in cloud-native development (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Experience with modern software architecture: microservices, API-first, serverless, composable systems
- Hands-on experience with AI/ML infrastructure, vector databases, LLM integration, and AI-native application development
- Full-stack understanding, including backend, frontend, infrastructure, and data layers
- Strong product mindset and ability to translate business objectives into technical execution
- Proven success operating in fast-paced, ambiguous environments
Technical Skills:
- Cloud infrastructure and orchestration (Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible)
- DevOps and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or equivalent)
- Event-driven architectures and distributed systems
- AI/ML workflow orchestration and model deployment
- Platform/API design and management
- Containerization and serverless architectures
- Real-time data processing and full-stack development
- Site reliability engineering and observability tools
Leadership Skills:
- Strong communication and stakeholder engagement
- Talent recruitment and team-building experience
- Strategic and hands-on leadership ability
- Entrepreneurial mindset
- Ability to work across teams and drive execution at speed
- Comfort with change and ambiguity in fast-moving environments
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience building enterprise platforms or marketplaces
- Knowledge of enterprise software, compliance, and scalability
- Background in healthcare, financial services, or manufacturing is a plus
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
- Open-source contributions or technical thought leadership
Additional Information:
- Location: Tri-State area (NY/NJ/CT)
- Hybrid
- Confidential search. All inquiries will be handled with discretion.
