Chief Technology Officer

CTO | Health & Fitness Technology | UK Remote

Recann is working with a growing health and fitness technology business that is looking to appoint a hands-on CTO to take full ownership of its technical function.

This is not a role for someone looking to step away from engineering.

For at least the next 12–18 months, you’ll remain close to the technology while leading a small distributed engineering team, shaping the architecture and technical roadmap, and bringing together two existing products into a single scalable platform.

The business already has live products, paying users and established industry relationships. The next phase is about building the technical foundations required to scale.

What you’ll own:

• Technical architecture and engineering roadmap
• Integration of two existing products into one platform
• Rebuilding and modernising elements of the existing technology
• Leadership and development of a distributed engineering team
• Engineering standards across testing, CI/CD, code review and releases
• Mobile delivery across iOS and Android
• Payments and billing integrations
• Security, data protection and handling of sensitive health data
• Technical readiness for integrations with larger gym and leisure operators
• Engineering use of AI, including making sensible decisions around where it should and shouldn’t be deployed
• Communicating technical health, capacity and risk to the wider leadership team

What we’re looking for:

You’ll probably be a CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering or experienced Engineering Lead from a product-led environment.

You should still be technically credible and comfortable getting into the detail when needed, while also being capable of owning the wider engineering function.

Experience across some of the following would be particularly relevant:

• Consumer mobile applications
• React Native / Expo
• TypeScript / Node.js
• AWS / cloud-native environments
• Postgres / Redis
• Stripe or complex payment integrations
• Building and leading small engineering teams
• Security and sensitive personal data
• Scaling an early-stage or growth-stage technology product

The current environment includes React Native, Expo, TypeScript, Fastify, Postgres, Redis, Docker, Stripe Connect and LaunchDarkly, although an exact technology match isn’t required.

More important is strong technical judgement, pragmatism and experience building products that need to scale without unnecessarily over-engineering them.

A genuine interest in health, fitness or wellbeing is important. The technology ultimately exists to help coaches, operators and individuals achieve better outcomes.

Location: UK, remote - preference for candidates within a commutable distance of Manchester for occasional meetings.

Working style: Flexible

Package: Competitive CTO-level salary + benefits

This should suit someone who enjoys the combination of building, leading and shaping, rather than inheriting a large engineering organisation and managing from a distance.