Chief Technology Officer

About the Role

Submittable is seeking a Chief Technology Officer to own our engineering vision, architecture, execution and drive towards an AI-first organization as we continue to scale. This is a pivotal leadership role reporting directly to the CEO, responsible for building and leading a high-performing, globally distributed engineering organization spanning India and the US. The CTO will partner closely with Product, Sales, and the broader Executive Leadership Team to translate strategic vision into technical execution including platform stability, scalable architecture, and cross-border effectiveness.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Strategy & AI Innovation

• Define and own the multi-year technology roadmap and architecture strategy with AI first approach in alignment with business goals
• Evaluate and evolve the technology stack to support AI-driven product development lifecycle, scalability, security, and reliability
• Drive and own product stability and platform resilience as a top engineering priority
• Position Submittable at the forefront of the non-profit software ecosystem by embedding automation and AI
  across the organization

Engineering Leadership

• Lead a distributed engineering organization across US and India
• Recruit, develop, and retain engineering talent; build a strong leadership bench
• Establish AI-enabled engineering best practices: code quality, testing, CI/CD, incident response, and security posture
• Drive cross-border collaboration and communication practices to close gaps between distributed teams

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with Product on roadmap prioritization and technical feasibility
• Work with Sales and Customer Success to address technical escalations and enterprise requirements
• Represent engineering in ELT strategic planning, budgeting, and board-level initiatives

Operational Excellence

• Own engineering KPIs (i.e. uptime/reliability, velocity, technical debt reduction, defect reporting, AI utilization/leverage, etc.)
• Oversee security and compliance team inclusive of SOC II audits, pen testing, privacy compliance, etc.
• Manage engineering budget, Saas platform margin, headcount planning, and vendor contracts
• Ensure compliance with data security, privacy, and industry regulations relevant to SaaS

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years in senior technology leadership (CTO or equivalent) at a SaaS company
• Proven experience leading distributed/global engineering teams, ideally including India-based teams
• Track record of scaling engineering organizations through growth stages (startup to mid-market SaaS)
• Forward-thinking perspective on product strategy, data platforms, and applied AI, with the ability
  to translate vision into execution
• Demonstrated experience building or scaling AI/ML-powered product features and driving AI adoption within an engineering organization"
• Strong technical foundation in modern web architecture, cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure/GCP), APIs, and data security
• Experience partnering with executive leadership on business strategy, not just technical execution
• Excellent communication skills; able to translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders and the board
• Experience with M&A technical due diligence, platform migrations, or major re-architecture projects is a plus
• Experience working in private equity-backed environments preferred

Success Metrics (First 12 Months)

• Established technical roadmap aligned to ELT strategic priorities
• Measurable improvement in platform stability and uptime
• Strengthened US/India engineering collaboration model
• Key senior engineering leadership hires and retention milestones met