Vice President of Technology

Location: Auburn, WA (onsite/hybrid)

Reports to: Jon Bach, Founder & President

Team: 2 IT technicians, 1 software developer, 1 TPM, plans to add 1-2 senior developers

About Puget Systems

Puget Systems builds high-performance custom workstations and servers for professionals in content creation, engineering, scientific computing, and AI/ML. For over two decades we've differentiated ourselves through obsessive quality, published reliability data, in-house benchmarking research (Puget Labs), and a consultative approach to every sale. We're a ~75-person company that competes with billion-dollar OEMs by being smarter, faster, and more genuinely customer-focused than they can be.

A significant part of that advantage is invisible to customers: a custom-built internal business operating system that runs configuration, quoting, purchasing, inventory, and production across the company. It was built by our founder over many years, and it is deeply fitted to how we work. It is a strategic advantage, but requires a full technology team to maintain and build on top of it.

About the Role

Until a few years ago, software and IT at Puget Systems were run personally by our founder. The technology department that exists today is young: a small, capable team of four people, informal processes, and a homegrown platform that is accompanied by a lot of tribal knowledge. We are looking for a VP of Technology to take true ownership of the systems, the team, and the roadmap and mature it into a sustainable system without losing the pragmatism and specialization that made it valuable in the first place.

This will always be a small team. If you're looking to build a large organization, this is not the role for you. But if you want to be the most senior technical person at a successful, profitable, and respected company, leading a small but effective team with outsized strategic impact, and a seat on the Executive Leadership Team… read on!

What You'll Own

• The internal business platform. Take over stewardship of our custom-built business OS from the founder. Learn the extensive legacy code base deeply, and lead the strategy for what to maintain, refactor, replace, or retire with deliberate architecture decisions rather than a reflex to rewrite. The platform is built on the LAMP stack.
• The software team and products. Mentor our software developers into confident, capable engineers, and hire 1-2 senior developers to raise the technical ceiling. Establish and maintain standards for the software team: source control discipline, code review, release management, testing, and build a culture of ownership and delivery of results.
• The IT team and infrastructure. Manage the internal IT team and oversee IT operations for the whole company. Oversee network configuration for reliability and security, and maintain our internal servers and infrastructure across onsite, colocation, and cloud environments. Craft our plan for 24/7 incident response, and follow it.
• The public website. Own www.pugetsystems.com, our WordPress-based front-end site that is our storefront and the home of our published research. This includes the API integrations that tie it back to our internal systems.
• The internal website. Codenamed “NAV” , this is the internal business OS that has an extensive code base and history. It will be a significant effort to learn this system and maintain it. Everyone who has come before you has under-estimated this system.
• Data integrations and reporting. Manage our connections to external platforms and services. We have decided that “NAV” is the central data hub. You will own this data, and its connectors to BI reporting, ensuring the business has reliable, trustworthy data to run on.
• Cybersecurity. Maintain and enforce cybersecurity standards company-wide, including the specific requirements embedded in our customer contracts. Own backup and disaster recovery.
• Documentation and process maturity. Establish the practices a mature technology organization needs, including documentation, well-defined processes, and task management workflows in ClickUp. We want this to be sized appropriately for a 75-person company, not over-complicated. Build internal support and prioritization processes so the rest of the company knows how to work with the team.
• Budget and financial management. Execute the annual budgeting process for the department, report expenses via Ramp, and manage the team to its monthly budget.
• A seat on the Executive Leadership Team. This role sits on the ELT, the group responsible for shaping the strategy and direction of the company. You'll represent technology at that table and you'll be expected to contribute to long term company-level decisions well beyond your own department.
• Technology strategy. Partner with the founder and leadership team to decide where technology investment creates competitive advantage, and where it doesn't. Translate business needs into a realistic roadmap, and deliver on it.

Where This Role Grows: Puget Labs

Puget Labs is the heart and soul of Puget Systems, and the moat around our business. It consists of two teams working as two sides of the same coin:

• The Performance Lab studies real end-user workflows and benchmarks computer hardware against them. They publish widely-read articles and are recognized figureheads in the industry. Puget Systems has built its reputation on this work.
• The R&D Lab engages directly with the PC hardware ecosystem (component manufacturers and vendors) to qualify components and design the laptops, workstations, servers, and storage that meet the workflow needs the Performance Lab identifies.

This VP will not own Puget Labs on day one. The job starts with software and IT. But once that foundation is well in hand, leadership of Puget Labs is the intended growth path for this role, bringing the company's core differentiator under the same technology leadership. Candidates should be genuinely excited by that trajectory: this is ultimately a role that grows into stewarding what makes Puget Systems special.

Who You Are

• A player-coach, permanently. You are a strong hands-on engineer who still writes and reviews code, and you expect to keep doing so.
• Experienced with inherited systems. You've taken ownership of large, long-lived, lightly-documented codebases before (ideally from the original author) and you know how to handle that transition.
• A builder of teams. You have a track record of growing junior developers into strong ones, and of hiring well. You mentor others, even those not on your team.
• Pragmatic about processes. You know that process and documentation sets up a team for success, and you calibrate to company size.
• Broad across software and IT. You're credible leading both application development and IT/infrastructure/security for a mid-sized business.
• A clear communicator with non-technical leaders. You can explain tradeoffs, set expectations, and earn trust across sales, production, and operations teams whose daily work runs on your systems.
• Financially accountable. You've owned a department budget before and treat it as a real commitment, including planning annually, tracking monthly, and making tradeoffs transparently.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software development and/or IT, including 3+ years leading a technology function as Director, VP, CTO, or Head of Engineering/IT.
• Direct experience owning both software and IT for a mid-sized business (roughly 50–500 employees). We're looking for proof you've done this specific job, not a scaled-down version of a big-company role, and not a first step up from team lead.
• A track record of maturing a technology organization: you can point to specific practices you established, systems you stabilized or replaced, and people who grew under your leadership.
• Deep hands-on proficiency with the LAMP stack, which our internal platform is built on, plus working fluency with a modern JavaScript framework (we've tentatively standardized on Vue for new projects); WordPress and API-driven integration experience is a plus.
• Prior ownership of a department budget.

Physical Requirements

• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Able to work from home or office.
• Able to travel for trade shows and other activities.

Nice to Have

• Experience in manufacturing, e-commerce, or configure-to-order businesses
• Experience working directly with a founder/owner in a succession or transition capacity
• Familiarity with ERP internal systems, whether homegrown or commercial
• Experience building or managing data lakes, data pipelines, and BI reporting stacks
• Experience meeting security requirements (e.g., customer security requirements, SOC2, NIST, or CMMC frameworks)

Why This Role Is Worth It

You'll inherit a genuinely interesting technical asset, a supportive founder who wants to hand it off well, a profitable and stable company with a strong reputation, and a team eager to grow. Your decisions will affect the entire company, and the role grows into stewardship of Puget Labs, who is the industry-respected source of our reputation. Few VP roles offer this much ownership with this little bureaucracy.

Benefits Include:

• M/D/V
• PTO and STO - Standard policy is 2 weeks PTO to start, +1 day / year until 4 week maximum
• Paid holidays - 8 days + 2 floating holiday per year
• Paid parental leave - 3 weeks
• Paid Medical Hardship Leave - up to 2 weeks / year
• Paid jury duty leave - up to 2 weeks / year
• 4% match on 401(k), immediate vesting
• Volunteer Matching Program
• Wellness Reimbursement Program
• Company-sponsored financial counseling

We give additional consideration to those who include a cover letter.

A background check will be run prior to hire. We are an EEO employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other protected class. Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa.