Field CTO (AI Enterprise scale up)

Hyphen Partners; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Hyphen Partners in Australia is seeking a Field CTO / Head of Forward-Deployed Engineering to lead hands-on delivery for enterprise clients, shape architecture and security, and own the build-and-deliver cycles. You will build the local technical team and drive pre-sales, demos, and customer success.

You will translate customer needs into product inputs for the global team, balance leadership with technical execution, and own critical Escalations and partnerships as the business scales.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience with production deployments and AI systems.
• Track record in pre-sales, solution architecture, or complex technical implementations (Field CTO / Solutions Architect background ideal).
• Strong leadership experience at director, VP, or founder level, including technical co-founder roles.
• Comfort building from a blank page—plan, team, and system without a pre-existing playbook.
• Experience scaling fast with ownership and accountability over speed and outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Sit in early sales conversations and run demos.
• Shape architecture and security discussions and lead the build and delivery of integrations.
• Build and grow the local technical team across engineering, integration, and pre-sales.
• Own escalations once customers are live and feed ground-level insights back to the product org.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

AI systems

Pre-sales / Solutions architecture

Leadership

Technical co-founder experience

Blank-page building

Scale-up leadership

Job description

Field CTO / Head of Forward-Deployed Engineering — Australia

A fast-growing applied AI company that builds production AI systems for enterprise customers is hiring a senior technical leader to represent them in Australia - equal parts sales engineer, delivery lead, and the voice of local customers back to the global product team.

This is a hands-on mandate, not a figurehead role. You'll sit in early sales conversations, run demos, and shape architecture and security discussions — then roll up your sleeves to actually build and ship the integrations that get customers live. You'll build the local technical team around you as you go, spanning engineering, integration, and pre-sales. Once customers are live, you're the one they call: owning escalations, partnerships, and turning what you're hearing on the ground into input the global product org actually acts on.

What they're looking for:

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience — you've shipped things that are actually in production, not just architected them. Experience with AI systems
• A track record in pre-sales, solution architecture, or complex technical implementations, ideally from a Field CTO, Solutions Architect, or Deployed Engineer background
• Real leadership range — Director, VP, or Founder-level experience. Have been a Technical co-founders during career
• Comfort building from a blank page — the plan, the team, and the system, with no existing playbook to follow
• Scale up experience where speed and ownership mattered more than title