AI and Business Unit Leadership

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, which manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for an AI and Business Unit Leadership (CTO) based in Netherlands.**

We are looking for an experienced technology executive to lead a global engineering organization while taking direct ownership of a strategic business unit. This is a high-impact leadership opportunity combining technology strategy, commercial responsibility, and hands-on AI innovation. You will work closely with the CEO to define the company's technical direction, translate customer needs into scalable solutions, and drive measurable business results. A major focus will be turning advanced AI capabilities, including LLMs and automation, into practical product and engineering advantages. You will also oversee the evolution of high-performance, real-time platforms, ensuring reliability, security, and scalability. This role is ideal for a commercially minded technology leader who enjoys building strong leadership teams, making strategic decisions, and turning ambitious ideas into tangible outcomes.

Accountabilities:

• Partner with the CEO to define and execute the overall technology strategy while taking ownership of a business unit, including its priorities, execution, performance, and commercial outcomes.
• Align technology investments and development priorities with customer needs, market opportunities, and broader business objectives, working closely with Product and Commercial teams.
• Drive the practical adoption of artificial intelligence, large language models (LLMs), and automation across products and engineering workflows, identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, product capabilities, and customer value.
• Establish clear success metrics for AI initiatives and oversee their implementation, ensuring that solutions deliver measurable improvements in quality, reliability, cost efficiency, and business performance.
• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary technology organization through Engineering Managers, Technical Leads, Infrastructure Leaders, and Data Science teams, fostering accountability, autonomy, and continuous improvement.
• Provide strategic direction and decision-making ownership to technical leaders while strengthening organizational capabilities, developing talent, and maintaining high standards of execution.
• Oversee the evolution of high-throughput, real-time technology infrastructure to support business growth, ensuring scalability, resilience, security, and operational reliability.
• Balance rapid innovation and experimentation with robust engineering practices, ensuring that technology platforms consistently meet the expectations of partners and customers.
• Challenge architectural and technical decisions, ensuring alignment between engineering execution, product strategy, and long-term business requirements.
• Maintain close collaboration with executive leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to translate strategic ambitions into actionable plans and measurable results.

Requirements:

• Strong professional background in software engineering, technology architecture, or a related technical discipline, with the ability to engage confidently in complex engineering discussions and challenge senior technical decisions.
• Proven experience leading substantial technology or engineering organizations, particularly through Engineering Managers, Technical Leads, and other senior leaders.
• Demonstrated success in developing leadership teams, establishing clear accountability structures, and creating a culture of autonomy, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Experience in technology strategy and business leadership, ideally with direct responsibility for a business unit, product area, or comparable commercial operation.
• Strong commercial awareness and the ability to connect technical decisions with customer requirements, investment priorities, revenue opportunities, and business performance.
• Hands-on experience using AI technologies, including LLMs, AI-powered development tools, and automation workflows, with a clear understanding of their practical applications and limitations.
• Proven ability to move AI initiatives from experimentation into production, evaluating their impact on quality, reliability, scalability, cost, and customer value.
• Experience managing complex, high-performance technology platforms, ideally involving real-time systems, high-throughput infrastructure, or data-intensive applications.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure scalability, system resilience, cybersecurity, and operational excellence.
• Excellent strategic thinking, communication, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to work effectively with executive leadership, technical teams, product stakeholders, and commercial functions.
• A proactive, entrepreneurial mindset, combining technical credibility with business ownership and the ability to make sound decisions in a fast-moving environment.

Benefits:

• **Direct CEO partnership:** Work closely with a technical founder, contributing to strategic decisions and helping translate ambitious technology objectives into business results.
• **Advanced AI infrastructure:** Access to a dedicated NVIDIA B300 GPU cluster, providing significant resources to develop and deploy innovative AI solutions.
• **Real-world AI impact:** Opportunity to apply AI, LLMs, and automation to data-rich products and engineering workflows at scale.
• **Strategic ownership:** Take responsibility for a business unit while shaping the wider technology strategy and organizational direction.
• **Leadership opportunities:** Build, develop, and empower a talented international team of engineering and technology professionals.
• **Innovation-driven environment:** Join a data-focused technology business operating at the intersection of AI, analytics, and real-time digital experiences.
• **Professional impact:** Influence product development, technical architecture, operational excellence, and long-term commercial growth.
• **Remote working:** Opportunity to work remotely within an international environment.