Ctpo

Chief Technology & Product Officer (CTPO)

Location: Hybrid, mostly remote, with at least one day a month in London office
Contract: Full-time, 12-month fixed-term contract
Salary: £150,000-200,000

Futureheads have been retained by a long standing client, an amazing purpose-led SaaS business. Their technology helps leading organisations and educational institutions hire and develop people better, faster and more fairly.

This is a player/manager CTPO role. You'll own product and technology at board level and stay close enough to the work to roll up your sleeves when needed.

You'll inherit a small, highly capable and well-rewarded team covering technology, product, research and data. The team is spread across the UK, Europe and the US and is ready for expert leadership. You'll own the team's day-to-day performance and deliver the technology strategy. With the MD and leadership team, you'll also shape the product strategy and roadmap.

The Role

• Lead and develop the team, building a culture of clarity, pace, collaboration and accountability
• Turn business strategy into product and technology priorities, and own the tech strategy, roadmap and investment decisions
• Make the key architecture, platform and technology calls
• Run day-to-day delivery: set priorities, allocate resources, remove blockers and keep quality high
• Balance new development with maintenance, tech debt, security and scalability
• Decide when to hire, contract, upskill internally or bring in partners
• Act as the senior technology authority, keeping systems secure, scalable, performant and cost-effective across development, QA, CI/CD, infrastructure, monitoring and incident management
• Spot and communicate technical risks and investment needs, and evaluate emerging tech, including AI
• Get into the detail when it counts: unblock delivery, challenge requirements and review technical approaches

Experience Required

• Prior board experience
• A strong track record of leading technology teams and delivering digital or SaaS products, ideally in a smaller or scaling business
• Real technical credibility across software engineering, architecture and cloud, with the depth to challenge senior engineers and do the work yourself if needed
• Product experience covering roadmaps, prioritisation and turning customer and commercial needs into product decisions
• Experience leading small, high-performing, hands-on teams
• Sound commercial judgement and the ability to make pragmatic decisions with incomplete information
• The ability to explain complex technical issues clearly to non-technical colleagues
• Experience of, and enthusiasm for, embedding AI in product and engineering functions

Additional Things of Importance

• Strong alignment with a social purpose and strong values
• Collaborative, pragmatic, curious and resilient, with high standards and low ego
• Comfortable when priorities shift quickly

We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you're working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.