Chief Technology Officer

saas.group; Redmond (WA); Remote; USD 230,000 - 380,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first culture

Learning Budget

Job summary

Prerender is seeking a hands-on CTO to drive a transformation from infrastructure optimization to a fast, product‑focused engineering organization. You will own the technology vision, set strategy, and manage the R&D budget while embedding AI‑first practices across a small, senior team.

You will lead a multi-region, Kubernetes-based render fleet, collaborate with the CEO and Product, and partner with saas.group to align engineering with customer value.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering with senior leadership experience at SaaS companies.
• Strong infrastructure background and experience with large distributed systems.
• Proven ability to embed AI tooling into engineering workflows.
• Hands-on leadership with the ability to code and influence strategy.

Responsibilities

• Own the technology vision, roadmap, and engineering strategy for Prerender.
• Lead adoption of AI-assisted development tooling to boost team productivity and set quality standards.
• Run multi-region Kubernetes-based render fleet and optimize cost, reliability, and operations.
• Represent Prerender's capabilities to customers, partners, and the market.
• Maintain high standards of software quality, security, and reliability.
• Coach and mentor engineers and foster a culture of ownership.

Skills

Software engineering

Technical leadership

AI tooling adoption

Kubernetes

Budget management

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD

DevOps

Cloud platforms

Job description

Profile Overview

Prerender has built a platform that thousands of companies trust to serve billions of pages to web crawlers. Now we're evolving into something bigger: the layer that makes the web legible to machines, both the search crawlers that have always mattered and the AI systems that increasingly decide what people find.

To get there, we need to transform how we build product. We're looking for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead that transformation, shifting our engineering organization from infrastructure-optimization to a high-velocity, product-focused team that moves fast and ships features that matter.

This is a building role, not a caretaker role. You'll own the technology vision, set the engineering strategy, and have authority over the R&D budget, team, and technical direction. You'll embed AI-first engineering practices, make smart infrastructure tradeoffs, and build the improvement motion that makes delivery faster and keeps it that way.

You'll lead a small, senior engineering team — around seven engineers today — supported by shared platform and DevOps resources from saas.group's central team. There is no management layer between you and the engineers, which puts you close to the work and means the leadership has to come from you.

So we need someone hands‑on enough to augment the team, not to manage it from a distance, and who can do that without losing hold of the strategy and the responsibilities only this role carries.

We need deep technical expertise, a strong infrastructure background, and a proven track record of transforming engineering teams at SaaS companies.

Your responsibilities

Technology Vision and Strategy:

• Own the technology vision, roadmap, and engineering strategy for Prerender. Align engineering work with business objectives and customer value.
• Lead adoption of AI-assisted development tooling to multiply team productivity; own the quality bar for what it produces.
• Drive architecture and infrastructure decisions with a holistic view of TCO that includes maintenance burden and engineering opportunity cost, not just hosting spend.
• Run a multi-region, Kubernetes-based render fleet efficiently: cost per render, reliability, and the operational hygiene that keeps both from drifting.
• Represent Prerender's technical capabilities to customers, partners, and the broader market.
• Maintain high standards of software quality, performance, security, and reliability.
• Track shifts in technology and engineering practice, and bring the ones that change how we build into the team.

Security and Compliance:

• Own security and compliance as a standing program. Prerender completes SOC 2 Type II and its ISO 27001 certification decision at the end of 2026; you inherit the year‑two observation period, the surveillance audit, and the operational discipline that keeps both credible.
• Keep the program legible to someone other than you: named owners, current vendor and auditor contacts, and no single point of failure.

Team Management and Growth:

• Coach and mentor engineers to reach their full potential. Set clear expectations and create opportunities for growth. People matter here.
• Build a culture of ownership, where engineers carry their decisions through instead of escalating them.
• Foster diversity and inclusion within the engineering organization.

Execution and Delivery:

• Own the continuous improvement motion of delivery. The team finds and removes its own bottlenecks on a regular cadence.
• Enhance DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and robust monitoring systems.
• Define and track engineering metrics that matter. Use data to identify bottlenecks and optimize workflows.
• Manage change deliberately. Changes to practice, process and infrastructure reach the people who have to run them — and, where customers are affected, the customers — with notice, consultation, and a route to raise a question before the change lands.

Executive Partnership and Stakeholder Management:

• Partner with the CEO and leadership team on company strategy. Communicate technology progress to company leadership and the board.
• Work closely with Product to align engineering capacity with customer needs.
• Translate technical concepts for non‑technical stakeholders and advocate for investments that drive business growth.

Ownership & Autonomy:

• Own the full R&D budget including personnel, infrastructure, tooling, and vendor relationships.
• Run that budget as a managed number. Maintain an infrastructure cost model, report forecast against actual, and be able to say what a decision costs before it's made.
• Make the right decisions for engineering, aligned with company strategy, without second‑guessing or micromanagement.

What You bring to the table

• 10+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years in senior engineering leadership (VP/Director/CTO) at a SaaS company.
• Strong infrastructure background with experience running large‑scale distributed systems and production Kubernetes, and making strategic tradeoffs between cost, maintenance burden, and engineering velocity. You've driven unit costs down on a fleet you owned.
• Demonstrated ability to embed AI tooling into engineering workflows and multiply team productivity, with a clear‑eyed view of where it helps, where it produces plausible work that doesn't hold up, and how review standards survive the increase in volume.
• Proven experience coaching, mentoring, and developing engineering teams, ideally through a significant transformation.
• A track record of raising a team's delivery speed and keeping it raised long after the initial push, with the measurement and process change that made it stick.
• A record of landing process and platform change that sticks, with the people affected brought along before it landed.
• Experience owning a security and compliance program in a SaaS company — SOC 2, ISO 27001 or equivalent — as a continuing operational responsibility.
• Business‑oriented and hands‑on: you understand how engineering decisions connect to revenue and customer value, and you contribute directly alongside the team, through the same review and planning process as everyone else.
• Experience with scalable, high‑performance web products, CI/CD, DevOps, and security principles. SEO or search‑related experience is a plus.
• Excellent communication skills. Comfortable presenting to boards, working with executives, and collaborating cross‑functionally. Communication is async‑first in our remote environment, leaning on clear, timely updates with documentation up‑to‑date and readable and proactive context‑sharing.

What's in it for You

• Ultimate flexibility: We're 100% remote. Work from wherever you like, whenever you like.
• Freedom and autonomy: High‑trust environment with lots of independence to solve problems your way, with support when you need it.
• Minimum bureaucracy: We stay efficient and keep momentum sustainable. No death by meetings.
• Real impact: This is a C‑level role with a seat at the executive table, board visibility, and the mandate to transform how we build product.
• Small & friendly team: We help each other out, have fun, and don't take ourselves too seriously.
• Our network: Access to a community of SaaS professionals across the saas.group portfolio who regularly exchange ideas and expertise.
• Flexible time off: Recharge when you need to.
• Learning Budget: Generous budget for classes, conferences, books, and other learning resources.

Prerender is part of saas.group , and we have a shared goal of succeeding together.

Think of us as the driving catalyst behind your favorite software success stories. saas.group, established in 2017, is on a mission to turbocharge promising B2B SaaS ventures, unlocking their full potential. As a Software-as-a-Service portfolio powerhouse, we specialize in acquiring small software treasures and polishing them into industry stars. With a dynamic, fully remote team of nearly 380+ colleagues spanning 50+ countries we are truly global and we are rewriting the playbook on SaaS innovation and collaboration. We grow 25 exciting brands under our umbrella. Feel free to explore our Candidate's Hub to get an insider's view, dive into our culture, gain valuable insights into our teams and how we work.

Also, don’t forget to follow saas.group on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on our job openings, podcast episodes, and with all things happening at our company.

We don’t just simply offer you to \"take a job with us\" but rather to \"join us on this journey\" to build the world's largest platform of independent SaaS companies.

saas.group is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. If you're passionate about working with a team that values innovation, excellence, and fairness, we encourage you to apply.

We believe in fair and transparent pay. Salary ranges at saas.group are location-adjusted, targeting local market medians for a remote‑first environment, and will be shared with our potential future employees in writing before your first interview - so you have everything you need to evaluate the opportunity.

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