Chief Technology Officer

Defense Technology | RF Communications | Edge AI/LLM Systems | DevSecOps

About the Opportunity

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