Chief Technology Officer / Co-Founder

Role overview Set technology direction and lead engineering, platform, AI, and infrastructure work for a cybersecurity product serving regulated and critical industries. The role combines company-level technical leadership with hands-on architectural judgment, including vulnerability management, compliance automation, and customer transitions toward post-quantum cryptography.

Responsibilities - Define the technology vision, architecture, and multi-year engineering roadmap. - Build and lead software, platform, AI, and infrastructure teams, including hiring, performance, and delivery. - Design secure, scalable, cost-conscious systems for vulnerability management and compliance automation. - Guide cryptographic modernization, from asset discovery and cryptographic inventories through risk scoring and customer migration planning. - Work with company leadership on product direction, fundraising, board updates, and customer engagement. - Establish engineering standards, security practices, and operational processes; evolve enterprise IT and platform strategy. - Represent the technical organization with customers, partners, investors, analysts, and the security community.

Requirements - At least 10 years of software engineering experience, including at least five years in senior technical leadership. - A record of building and scaling strong engineering and product teams, and leading product work from discovery through launch and iteration. - Hands-on experience designing distributed cloud systems on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, plus the ability to program, debug, and ship production software. - Deep cybersecurity knowledge spanning cloud and network architecture, secure development, and attacker behavior. - Applied cryptography judgment, including familiarity with NIST post-quantum standards FIPS 203, 204, and 205, CNSA 2.0 timelines, and migration challenges involving RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography. - Strong enterprise architecture, program management, communication, and problem-solving skills; bachelor's or master's degree in a related technical field.

Nice to have - Experience with CMMC, NIST 800-171, SOC 2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or FedRAMP. - Knowledge of quantum computing and the harvest-now, decrypt-later threat model. - Startup founding experience, AI/ML or LLM applications in security, or work in regulated industries.

Benefits and work setup The position is hybrid in Houston, Texas, with flexibility for remote work.