Chief Technology Officer

Chief Technology Officer

London | Hybrid – three days per week in the office

Up to £150,000 base salary, plus share options

The opportunity

We are working with a fast-growing, technology-led business to appoint its first Chief Technology Officer.

The company has built a proven digital platform, established a strong recurring-revenue base and is now preparing for its next stage of growth. It needs a CTO who can define the technology vision, evolve the platform and build the internal engineering capability required to scale.

This is an executive leadership role, but it is not one that sits far away from the technology. You will remain close enough to the architecture, platform and delivery detail to challenge decisions, raise standards and recognise what good looks like.

The current development function comprises approximately 15 outsourced specialists across backend, frontend, mobile, QA, analysis, project management and delivery. A central part of your remit will be leading this capability while building a high-performing in-house engineering team and culture.

What you’ll do

• Define and deliver a technology strategy aligned with the company’s commercial and product ambitions.
• Assess the existing platform and guide its evolution into a secure, reliable and scalable architecture.
• Identify and manage technical debt, platform risk and future investment priorities.
• Design the engineering organisation and build critical capability in-house.
• Recruit, develop and retain strong engineering leaders and teams.
• Create a culture of ownership, collaboration, technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Lead the existing outsourced development function and determine the right long-term balance between internal and external capability.
• Improve engineering practices across planning, testing, CI/CD, observability, security, incident response and reliability.
• Partner closely with product and commercial leaders, connecting technology investment to customer value and measurable business outcomes.
• Champion the effective use of data and AI across product development and internal operations.
• Communicate technology priorities, risks, trade-offs and progress clearly at leadership level.

What we’re looking for

• Significant experience leading technology or engineering within a startup moving into scale-up, or a scale-up entering its next stage. This is essential.
• A demonstrable record of building engineering teams, in-house capability and culture from scratch or through a substantial transformation.
• Strong architectural judgement across modern SaaS platforms, APIs, data, infrastructure, security and reliability.
• The technical credibility to challenge and support engineering teams without needing to operate as the principal hands-on developer.
• Using AI to improve software delivery, product capabilities or internal operations.
• Experience leading internal, outsourced and distributed engineering teams.
• Commercial awareness and the ability to balance speed, quality, cost, risk and customer value.
• A strong product mindset and experience shaping priorities alongside product and commercial leaders.
• Clear, low-ego leadership with the ability to create alignment and explain complex technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfort operating in an ambitious environment where not everything has already been defined.

Desirable experience

• Leading Ruby on Rails teams or working closely with teams responsible for a Ruby-based platform.
• Subscription, marketplace or other recurring-revenue digital products.
• Payment platforms such as Stripe.
• Native mobile applications.

Hands-on Ruby expertise is not required. Experience of the ecosystem would be beneficial, but leadership, architectural judgement and relevant scale-up experience are considerably more important.

The package

• Base salary up to £150,000
• Share option scheme
• Company pension
• 30 days’ holiday plus national holidays
• Hybrid working, with three days per week in the London office
• Collaborative and supportive working culture

This is an opportunity to shape the technical future of a proven, ambitious business and build an engineering organisation capable of supporting its next phase of growth.

To learn more or arrange a confidential conversation, please apply.