AI-First CTO — Remote, Lead Global Engineering

Make Choteau Home; Town of Montana (WI); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with employer match

Equity stock options

Flexible hours and remote work options

Paid parental leave

Professional development stipends

Community outreach programs

Monthly company events

Job summary

Submittable is seeking a Chief Technology Officer to own our engineering vision, architecture, and AI-first strategy as we scale globally. This leadership role reports to the CEO and will build a high-performing, distributed engineering organization across the US and India, partnering with Product, Sales, and the ELT to translate strategy into execution.

We’re looking for a technical executive with 12+ years in software engineering and 5+ in senior leadership, proven success scaling SaaS

Qualifications

• 12+ years in software engineering with 5+ years in senior technology leadership (CTO or equivalent) at a SaaS company.
• Experience leading distributed/global engineering teams, ideally including India-based teams.
• Track record of scaling engineering organizations through growth stages (startup to mid-market SaaS).
• Forward-thinking perspective on product strategy, data platforms, and applied AI, with the ability to translate vision into execution.
• Demonstrated experience building or scaling AI/ML-powered product features and driving AI adoption within an engineering organization.
• Strong technical foundation in modern web architecture, cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure/GCP), APIs, and data security.
• Experience partnering with executive leadership on business strategy, not just technical execution.
• Excellent communication skills; able to translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders and the board.
• Experience with M&A technical due diligence, platform migrations, or major re-architecture projects is a plus.
• Experience working in private equity-backed environments preferred.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-year technology roadmap and AI-first architecture strategy in alignment with business goals.
• Evolve tech stack to support AI-driven product development, scalability, security, and reliability.
• Drive and own product stability and platform resilience as a top engineering priority.
• Lead distributed engineering across US and India and recruit top engineering leaders.
• Establish AI-enabled engineering best practices: code quality, testing, CI/CD, incident response, security posture.
• Drive cross-border collaboration and communication to close gaps between distributed teams.
• Partner with Product on roadmap prioritization and technical feasibility; work with Sales/CS on technical escalations.
• Represent engineering in ELT budgeting and board-level initiatives; oversee budget, SaaS margins, headcount, and vendor contracts.
• Ensure data security, privacy, and regulatory compliance across SaaS products.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed teams

AI/ML strategy

Cloud architecture

Stakeholder communication

M&A due diligence

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

CI/CD

Security best practices

Job description

Submittable is seeking a Chief Technology Officer to own our engineering vision, architecture, and AI-first strategy as we scale globally. This leadership role reports to the CEO and will build a high-performing, distributed engineering organization across the US and India, partnering with Product, Sales, and the ELT to translate strategy into execution.

We’re looking for a technical executive with 12+ years in software engineering and 5+ in senior leadership, proven success scaling SaaS