Group CTO

Anchr; Antwerpen; On-site; EUR 140,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Hybrid work with travel across Belgium

Job summary

Anchr is seeking a Chief Technology Officer to drive a company-wide AI transformation across our Belgian and Dutch portfolio. You will set the technology strategy, champion hands-on AI adoption, and guide legacy modernisation across portfolio companies.

You will lead architecture, build internal talent, run due diligence on acquisitions, and report to Anchr Leadership with visibility to investors. Regular travel will be required.

Qualifications

• Leadership in AI-driven transformation across multiple companies.
• Hands-on experience with AI coding, testing and migration tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI-native architecture and processes to modernise legacy codebases.
• Set technology strategy for portfolio companies and guide AI adoption.
• Perform technical due diligence on acquisitions and report to leadership and investors.
• Build internal capability and hire when necessary to fill gaps.
• Establish knowledge-sharing platforms with clear ownership and metrics.

Skills

AI strategy

Technical leadership

AI adoption

Architecture design

People development

Talent sourcing

Business case

Cross-team facilitation

Due diligence

Change management

Job description

Anchr is a Belgian buy-and-build software group, run as a lean holding: a small central team, and software companies that keep ownership of their own products, technology and strategy. The group currently brings together 9 software companies across 6 domains, 300+ people in Belgium and the Netherlands, 3,000+ customers, and over €50m in revenue.

This is a technology role at the centre of Anchr. Today the role is filled by external advisors — we want to bring it in-house. The CTO will set technology strategy, guide the companies through AI adoption, and support them through change.

Skills we're looking for

• You can lead without formal authority. Technical enough to sit in a code review, diplomatic enough to challenge a founder-CEO who's been

• running their company from the start.

• You use AI yourself, daily — not just recommend it. You personally use AI coding, review, testing and migration tools in your own work, so you know from hands-on experience what actually saves time.

• You can set-up AI-native architecture and processes to help transfer legacy codebases.

• You spot the senior engineer who should already be tech lead and help them get there. You only hire externally when there's nobody internally, and you know the Benelux talent market.

• You make knowledge move between teams. You set up practical ways for teams to share solutions — with a real owner and real time allocated.

• You can talk numbers with the business. You can build a business case and defend it in commercial terms.

• You make sure the holding, and all the Anchr companies adopt an AI-first approach in every aspect of the business, it being finance, HR, legal, sales and any other department.

• You set up processes, follow-up and continuously improve.

• You run technical due diligence on new acquisitions.

• You report to Anchr Leadership, with visibility to our investors.

Context

• Portfolio companies need help transforming. Several of the nine companies run on old codebases— often understood in depth by a few people. This role helps them modernise safely and set up AI-native processes that make legacy systems easier to hand over.

• An opportunity to fill a gap in technical leadership. Some companies don't yet have strong technical leadership. This role helps close that gap — by developing the internal candidate or by hiring if needed.

• AI value isn't showing up in the numbers yet. Real AI use cases already exist across the group, but they aren't reflected in results yet, while competitors are already pricing and selling on them.

• Nine companies are solving the same problems separately. This role makes sharing worth choosing — a platform nobody adopts is worse than no platform at all.

What success looks like

A well-oiled AI-transformation machine that can hyper-accelerate the AI-adoption of companies in a short time frame. One clear metric: return on technology and R&D investment across the group.

Practicalities

• Competitive compensation package

• Based in Mechelen (Anchr HQ), at least two office days per week, with regular travel across the Belgian and Dutch portfolio companies.

• Company: Anchr