Chief Technology Officer

About the Company

Our client is an AI consultancy and managed services startup that believes the most successful future enterprises will be those that combine AI capabilities with specialised knowledge and data to uncover sustainable advantages. They are committed to helping their customers innovate and operationalise AI at scale.

The company’s flagship product is an enterprise-grade managed service designed to enable customers to scale their AI workloads safely and securely, without the need to build and run the underlying AI infrastructure themselves. This allows customers to focus on rapid innovation and embedding their market advantage early.

Position Overview

Our client is seeking an entrepreneurial and highly technical CTO to join their leadership team. As CTO, you will be responsible for designing and building the underlying platform architecture for a managed service, leveraging best-of-breed technology such as Databricks and other key vendor solutions. You will also develop external UX and service management layers to provide an exceptional customer interface to the managed service.

Key Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture Design: Lead the design and development of the platform architecture, integrating technologies from Databricks and other key vendors like AWS, Microsoft Azure, DBT, Fivetran, Immuta, and Pinecone.
• Platform Development and Integration: Oversee the development, deployment, and maintenance of the platform. Ensure seamless integration with customers' data and applications, enabling AI workloads to operate at an enterprise scale.
• Custom Component Development: Develop custom components and intellectual property to connect the platform's elements, such as data ingestion pipelines, data catalogues, model registries, model monitoring systems, and user interfaces.
• Service Management: Provide a robust service wrapper around the platform, including engineering and human support services such as platform provisioning, configuration, security, backup, recovery, scaling, troubleshooting, and consulting.
• Customer Collaboration: Work closely with sales, marketing, and customer success teams to ensure the platform meets customers' needs and expectations. Provide technical guidance, support, and be comfortable engaging directly with customers.
• Thought Leadership: Act as a thought leader in the AI and data engineering space, representing the company at events, contributing to blogs, and engaging with the wider AI community.

Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years of experience in technology leadership roles, with a strong background in data engineering, data science, and machine learning. Deep experience with Databricks and related AI technologies is essential.
• Technical Expertise: Extensive experience designing and building scalable platforms using a combination of on-premises and cloud-based services (AWS, Azure, etc.). Proficient in the use of Databricks, data lakes, data warehouses, and data governance tools.
• Entrepreneurial Mindset: Demonstrated ability to thrive in a startup environment. Proven track record of building and scaling technology platforms from the ground up.
• Customer-Focused: Comfortable interacting directly with customers and external stakeholders, including presenting at events, writing blogs, and being the technical face of the company.
• Leadership: Strong leadership and team management skills, with a focus on fostering innovation, creativity, and collaboration within the engineering team.
• Strategic Vision: Ability to translate business needs into technical solutions and drive the development of innovative products that deliver significant customer value.