Chief Technology Officer & Chief AI Officer (CTO along with CAIO position)

Chief Technology Officer & Chief AI Officer (CTO along with CAIO position)

About the Role

Our client is seeking a visionary and hands-on Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead our technology and artificial intelligence strategy. This role executive will be responsible for driving technological innovation, architecting scalable systems, and spearheading AI-first initiatives that create sustainable competitive advantages. The ideal candidate is a strategic technologist and AI thought leader who can balance long-term vision with executional excellence.

Key Responsibilities

Technology Leadership (CTO)

• Define and execute the overall technology vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with business objectives.
• Architect, build, and scale robust, secure, and cost-efficient technology infrastructure, platforms, and products.
• Lead engineering, DevOps, data, and product engineering teams, fostering a culture of innovation, ownership, and technical excellence.
• Oversee the software development lifecycle (SDLC), ensuring agile delivery, code quality, and system reliability.
• Drive cloud strategy, cybersecurity posture, data governance, and compliance with relevant regulations (GDPR, SOC 2, ISO, DPDP, etc.).
• Manage technology budgets, vendor relationships, and build-vs-buy decisions.
• Collaborate with the CEO, CFO, and business leaders to translate strategy into scalable technology outcomes.

AI Leadership

• Define and execute the enterprise-wide AI strategy, including Generative AI, Machine Learning, LLMs, Agentic AI, and applied data science.
• Identify high-impact AI use cases across products, operations, customer experience, and internal productivity.
• Build and lead a world-class AI/ML team including research scientists, ML engineers, prompt engineers, and AI product managers.
• Establish responsible AI frameworks covering ethics, bias mitigation, explainability, data privacy, and model governance.
• Evaluate and integrate emerging AI technologies, foundation models, and tools (OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source LLMs, vector DBs, RAG pipelines, MLOps platforms).
• Partner with business units to embed AI-driven decision-making and automation across the organization.
• Represent the company as an AI thought leader through conferences, publications, partnerships, and investor communications.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, AI/ML, or a related field.
• 10+ years of progressive technology leadership experience, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles (VP Engineering, CTO, Head of AI).
• Proven track record of building and scaling technology organizations and AI/ML products from 0 to 1 and 1 to 100.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), modern software architectures (microservices, event-driven, serverless), and data platforms.
• Strong hands-on understanding of Machine Learning, Deep Learning, NLP, Computer Vision, and Generative AI / LLMs.
• Experience deploying AI/ML models in production at scale, including MLOps, model monitoring, and lifecycle management.
• Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional teams of 50+ engineers and data scientists.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to translate technology investments into measurable business outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience as a CTO in a high-growth startup, SaaS, or digital-first enterprise.
• Published research, patents, or open-source contributions in AI/ML.
• Experience with responsible AI, AI governance frameworks, and regulatory landscapes (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF).
• Exposure to fundraising, M&A due diligence, and board-level communication.

Key Competencies

• Strategic Vision: Ability to anticipate technology and AI trends and shape long-term direction.
• Executional Excellence: Bias for action, delivery-focused, and outcome-oriented.
• People Leadership: Inspires, mentors, and retains top engineering and AI talent.
• Innovation Mindset: Encourages experimentation, rapid prototyping, and calculated risk-taking.
• Communication: Articulates complex technical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ethical Leadership: Champions responsible, secure, and trustworthy AI and technology practices.