Chief Technology Officer
Defense Technology | RF Communications | Edge AI/LLM Systems | DevSecOps
About the Opportunity
Our client, an emerging defense technology company, is seeking a highly technical and hands-on Chief Technology Officer to lead the architecture, engineering strategy, and technical execution of next-generation autonomous and edge-enabled systems.
This role sits at the intersection of:
- RF communications and networking systems
- Edge-deployed AI/LLM technologies
- Embedded systems and software infrastructure
- CI/CD and DevSecOps for mission-critical environments
The CTO will serve as a core member of the executive leadership team and will help scale the organization from advanced prototype through operational deployment.
This is an opportunity for a builder — someone equally comfortable leading engineering strategy, engaging with customers and investors, and working directly with engineers on deeply technical problems.
Key Responsibilities
Technical Leadership
- Define and execute the company’s long-term technology vision and engineering roadmap
- Build and lead multidisciplinary engineering teams across hardware, software, AI/ML, and systems engineering
- Establish scalable engineering processes, development standards, and technical culture
- Serve as a technical representative to customers, government stakeholders, and strategic partners
RF Communications & Embedded Systems
- Lead development of advanced RF communications architectures and networking systems
- Guide tradeoff decisions involving spectrum utilization, latency, resilience, security, and performance
- Oversee integration of embedded compute, software-defined radios, and onboard processing systems
- Ensure alignment between hardware architecture and AI inference capabilities at the edge
Edge AI & LLM Systems
- Drive deployment of AI/ML and large language model technologies onto constrained edge hardware platforms
- Lead initiatives around optimization techniques such as quantization, pruning, and accelerated inference
- Define AI infrastructure and tooling for autonomy, sensor fusion, and real-time decision support
- Evaluate and implement emerging open-source and open-weight AI technologies
Software Infrastructure & DevSecOps
- Build modern CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines supporting embedded systems and AI-enabled software delivery
- Establish secure software lifecycle practices appropriate for defense and mission-critical systems
- Implement scalable engineering tooling and infrastructure that accelerates development velocity and reliability
Qualifications
Required
- 12+ years of engineering experience with progression into senior technical leadership
- Strong expertise in RF communications systems and embedded technologies
- Experience deploying AI/ML or LLM-enabled systems on edge or resource-constrained hardware
- Background building software infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and DevSecOps practices
- Strong software engineering foundation across systems-level and AI/ML environments
- Experience operating in aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomy, or other mission-critical industries
- Proven ability to recruit and lead high-performing technical teams
Preferred
- Experience with satellite communications, tactical networking, or contested communications environments
- Familiarity with embedded AI inference frameworks and edge acceleration technologies
- Prior startup or high-growth environment experience
- Security clearance or eligibility preferred
