Chief Technology & Product Officer

Vakari.ai; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 380,000; Full time

Job summary

Vakari.ai is seeking a founding technical leader in San Jose to own the engineering, product, design, and support as the company spins out of incubation. You’ll lead a 9-person team now and grow it, making lasting architecture decisions while staying connected to code and customers.

You’ll work closely with the CEO to land a roadmap across procurement, contracts and AP, with a strong focus on usage-based revenue metrics and enterprise-grade security.

Qualifications

• Shipped AI products to production.
• Built from zero to one as founder/tech leader.
• Led and grew teams from a few to 15+ engineers.
• Made architecture calls with clear trade-offs.
• Hands-on technical depth in modern stacks.
• Bias toward shipping and delivering.
• Strong customer-facing product intuition.

Responsibilities

• Architecture: define data model, agent layer, connectors to ERP systems; decide what to build, buy, or defer.
• Engineering: ship roadmap with quality, security, uptime for enterprise finance teams.
• Product: own roadmap across Procurement, Contracts + e-Sign, AP and Close.
• Design: create user-friendly UX from request to close.
• Usage: instrument and grow delivery per customer per pillar.
• Support/onboarding: ensure fast, reliable go-lives in phases.
• Security/trust: lead SOC 2 and security reviews; keep AI-human workflow balance.
• Team: hire, develop, and lead engineering, product, design, and support.

Skills

Shipped AI products

Founding/leadership

Team building

Architecture decisions

Hands-on depth

Customer empathy

Python

SQL/NoSQL

Cloud infrastructure

Agile

Web technologies

Agentic toolkits

Tools

Python

SQL

NoSQL

Cloud platforms

Agile release

Web tech

Agentic toolkits

Job description

About the Role

You and the CEO are Vakari's leadership team. He owns customers, go-to-market and the company; you own everything we build and how it lands with customers: engineering, product, design and support. This is a founding role. You'll join as Vakari spins out of incubation, take over a working product and a team of 9 people, and grow the team over the next year. You'll make the architecture decisions that last, set how the team builds, and stay close enough to the code and to customers to know what's true.

Three things matter most:

• Customers. You'll be in the room for demos, onsites and go-lives, and you'll hear problems first-hand. Finance leaders trust people who understand their work, so you'll learn it.
• Usage. We earn revenue only when Vakari does the work: requests orchestrated, invoices processed without a human touch, journal entries posted. Usage is our revenue line, and you'll own it as a product metric.
• Execution. A clear roadmap, shipped on time, with quality a CFO can sign off on.

Responsibilities

• Architecture: The one-record data model, the agent layer, and two-way connectors to Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite and SAP. You decide what we build, buy and defer.
• Engineering: Shipping the roadmap with quality, security and uptime that enterprise finance teams rely on.
• Product: The roadmap across Procurement, Contracts + e-Sign, AP and Close, set with the CEO and grounded in what customers use.
• Design: A product people can use without training, from the employee who makes a request to the Controller who closes the books.
• Usage: Instrumenting and growing the work Vakari completes for each customer, because that is how we earn.
• Support and onboarding: Fast, reliable go-lives in phases of 6–8 weeks, and support customers can count on.
• Security and trust: Leading SOC 2 and customer security reviews, and keeping "AI proposes, humans confirm" true in every workflow.
• Team: Hiring, developing and leading engineering, product, design and support, and setting the culture for how we build.

What success looks like

In your first 90 days

• You've met every live customer and every active prospect in late stages, and joined at least one onsite and one go-live.
• You own the roadmap with the CEO, and the team ships against it on a predictable cadence.
• You've reviewed the architecture and written down the decisions that matter for the next 18 months.
• Usage is measured per customer and per pillar, and reviewed every week.

In your first year

• Customers go live in phases of 2–6 weeks, and expand from one pillar to more.
• The team has grown to own each application.
• SOC 2 is in place, and enterprise security reviews are routine rather than a blocker.
• The platform supports Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite and SAP, with connectors customers trust.

Qualifications

• Shipped AI products to production. You've built with LLMs and agents in products real customers depend on, and you know where they fail and how to make them reliable, auditable and affordable.
• Built from zero to one. You've been a founder or the first technical leader at an early company, and you've taken a product from early customers to repeatable growth.
• Led and grown teams. You've hired and led engineers, and you can lead product, design and support as well. You've built a team from a handful of people to 15 or more.
• Made architecture calls that lasted. You can explain the trade-offs you made, what you'd change, and why.
• Hands-on technical depth. Experience with Python, SQL and NoSQL databases, cloud infrastructure, agile release practices, modern web technologies and agentic toolkits.
• Energy and a bias to ship. You hold a high bar and still get things out the door. You'd rather show a working version than debate a plan.
• A pull toward customers. You enjoy sitting with the people who use what you build, and you turn what you hear into product.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with finance systems: procurement, AP, the close, or integrations with SAP, Microsoft Dynamics or NetSuite.
• Experience selling to enterprises: security reviews, SOC 2, single sign-on and audit requirements.
• Experience with usage-based pricing, including metering and billing on what customers use.

Where: San Jose, California, in the office four days a week. We build and decide together, in person.