Chief Technology Officer

Remote in Chicago, IL

Please note that candidates must currently live in the following states: DC, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia.

Civis Analytics is hiring a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead the company's technical vision, architecture, and execution as we expand our platform and launch standalone AI products. Reporting to the CEO, the CTO will play a critical player-coach role: setting long-term technical direction while staying close to systems, decisions, and delivery.

This role owns the cohesion between Civis's core data platform and its growing AI product portfolio. As we scale our AI capabilities, the CTO will ensure that our existing data infrastructure and IP remain strong, reliable, and extensible-while guiding teams toward an AI-centric development and product environment.

Salary 225-325k

What You'll Do

• Be the tech voice within our senior leadership team and guide decision-making and business planning as we scale;
• Own and drive Civis's technical roadmap across both the Civis Platform and emerging AI products, ensuring alignment, cohesion, and long-term scalability
• Lead architecture decisions across platform, data, and AI systems, balancing speed, reliability, and maintainability
• Act as a player-coach: stay close to systems, technical tradeoffs, and delivery while empowering teams to execute independently. Guide the organization toward an AI-centric product and development environment, including tooling, workflows, and engineering practices
• Lead and integrate a cross-functional team spanning product, engineering, data, and AI, while serving as a visible, hands-on leader and magnet for technical talent as the organization grows (approximately 15 people initially).
• Provide thought leadership within the company; research and evaluate cutting-edge practices and enabling technologies for internal adoption; assess potential partnerships and acquisitions;
• Be the public face of Civis technology and data science; network, evangelize, and form relationships with press and peer organizations; participate in high-level sales meetings; and give back to the community.

What We're Looking For (Minimum Qualifications)

• Practical, real-world experience working with AI systems and understanding their application in production environments - beyond theory or research
• Significant experience leading software, platform, or data engineering organizations in a hands-on leadership capacity
• Demonstrated ability to own and evolve technical roadmaps across multiple product lines or platforms
• Experience making architectural decisions for complex, data-driven systems
• Comfort getting into the technical weeds when needed to unblock teams or resolve critical issues
• Proven ability to hire, develop, and manage high-performing technical teams
• Clear, direct communication style and comfort making and standing behind difficult technical decisions
• Familiarity with building and scaling AI products in production
• Hands-on experience with modern cloud platforms and distributed systems
• Authorization to work in the United States

You Should Apply If

• You want to actively shape and build AI products, not just talk about them
• You enjoy owning technical strategy while staying close to execution and delivery
• You're comfortable operating in ambiguity and making decisions with imperfect information
• You want to lead teams through a meaningful shift toward AI-centric products and development practices

You Should Not Apply If

• You prefer a purely strategic or advisory CTO role with little hands-on involvement
• You are uncomfortable working directly with AI systems or learning their practical constraints
• You expect highly structured environments with minimal change
• You prefer delegating all technical depth rather than engaging directly when needed