Chief Technology Officer

Theron Solutions; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Theron Solutions is seeking a Chief Technology Officer to own the technical vision and lead engineering at a well-funded AI safety applied-research lab. You'll work alongside the founders to build evaluations that identify AI's failure modes, create training environments that reduce them, and ship real-time guardrails that enforce compliance in production — starting with financial services.

The role emphasizes hands-on building, hiring and mentoring engineers, setting architecture and research

Qualifications

• CTO/Head of Engineering or senior engineering leadership experience.
• Experience building AI/LLM products and deploying them.
• Experience with RL environments, evaluation pipelines, or training pipelines.
• Experience hiring engineers and growing teams.
• US work authorization required.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical vision and lead engineering for an AI safety lab.
• Build evaluations to identify AI failure modes in financial services.
• Productionize research MVP into real-time guardrails for partners.
• Set technical architecture and research direction with founders.
• Hire and mentor engineers to scale the engineering team.
• Collaborate hands-on with design partners to iterate on needs.
• Drive systems from 0-1, building core infrastructure.

Skills

CTO experience

AI/LLM product deployment

Evaluation environments

Core infrastructure

Builder-first founder profile

US work authorization

Education

University degree

Job description

We are looking for a Chief Technology Officer with 5+ years of experience to own the technical vision and lead engineering at a well-funded AI safety applied-research lab. You'll work alongside the founders to build evaluations that identify AI's legal failure modes, create training environments that reduce them, and ship real-time guardrails that enforce compliance in production — starting with financial services.

What will you be doing?

• Building legal evaluations (RL environments) to measure AI's failure modes in financial services
• Productionizing the existing research MVP into real-time guardrails for design partners
• Setting technical architecture and research direction alongside the founders
• Hiring and mentoring engineers in your first year to build out the engineering team
• Working hands-on with design partners — iterating directly on their needs while building core infrastructure
• Experience hiring engineers, growing teams, and building systems from 0-1
• Experience building eval harnesses, RL environments, or training pipelines

Baseline

Seniority

• Experience as a CTO, Head of Engineering, or engineering leader
• Experience building and deploying AI or LLM products
• Experience with agent RAG, forward-deployed work, on-prem models, or building evaluation and testing environments
• Experience building core infrastructure
• Builder-first co-founder profile, currently writing code and shipping, not managing from a distance
• US work authorization (visa transfers acceptable)

Nice-to-have

• Experience at fast-paced companies (Ramp, Mercury, Kalshi, or Perplexity)

Education

• Strong university background

Our client is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. Employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, military service, genetic information, or any other status protected by law.