Chief Technology Office

Chief Technology Officer

The Chief Technology Officer is responsible for setting and executing the company's technology vision, owning the full engineering and platform stack, and ensuring that technology decisions directly accelerate business outcomes, product innovation, and go to market performance. The CTO reports to the Chief Executive Officer and leads a team of 50 or more across software engineering, data integrations, infrastructure and Cloud, and testing.

The CTO is a senior executive partner who thinks commercially, communicates transparently, and builds world class teams.

The CTO will be a key contributor to company strategy, client success, and Strategic Partner relations, and will represent engineering at the executive level. The right candidate combines deep technical depth with sharp business acumen, understands the unique dynamics of higher education institutions, and has a demonstrated record of building and scaling SaaS platforms in a high growth environment.

Additionally, the CTO will work with other parts of the organization in cross-company initiatives, such as corporate security, AI transformation, and corporate policy governance. He/she will have high levels of passion, intellect, drive, and energy and will be a self-confident, team-oriented individual with strong ethics and integrity.

The CTO shapes and champions the technology strategy that powers Ad Astra's mission, product evolution, and competitive differentiation in the higher education market.

• Develop and own a multi-year technology vision, strategy, and roadmap that is tightly aligned with the company's go to market strategy, product portfolio goals, and growth objectives.
• Serve as a strategic adviser to the CEO and executive leadership team on all technology investment decisions, platform evolution, and technical risk management.
• Partner with Product leadership to adopt and operate within the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) product model, ensuring engineering functions as a full partner in discovery and delivery rather than a downstream only execution organization.
• Lead and communicate a platform consolidation roadmap that reduces architectural complexity, accelerates outcome velocity, and reduces total cost of ownership.
• Define and govern the strategy for integrating external institutional systems into the Ad Astra platform, including Student Information Systems, Learning Management Systems, ERP platforms, and scheduling tools prevalent in higher education environments.
• Establish technology governance frameworks including IP protection protocols, data stewardship standards, and regulatory compliance postures aligned to higher education requirements.
• Develop and manage the annual technology budget for capital and operating expenditures; ensure effective allocation of engineering resources against strategic priorities.
• Represent the technology organization at the Board level, providing regular updates on strategic initiatives, platform health, and engineering performance metrics.
• Monitor competitive landscape and emerging technology trends in higher education SaaS, translating insights into proactive strategic recommendations.
• Build scalable architecture standards that will support inorganic growth
• Lead technical due diligence on acquisition targets, including architecture assessment, technical debt review, security posture and platform integration feasibility and provide technical input related to acquisition valuations, integration timelines and costs-to-integrate.
• Lead post-acquisition integration work including defining standards for platform integration, data migration, API harmonization and team integration

The CTO builds and sustains a high performing engineering organization rooted in accountability, psychological safety, and a culture of continuous improvement.

• Recruit, develop, and retain exceptional engineering talent across software development, data engineering, infrastructure, Dev Ops, and AI disciplines.
• Build and evolve an organizational structure that enables both rapid product delivery and long-term platform quality, including clear career ladders and progression frameworks.
• Foster a culture of innovation,…