Chief Technology Officer

About the role

Toptal is seeking a hands‑on Chief Technology Officer to lead product and engineering execution while embedding AI at the core of every system. The role combines strategic vision with deep technical involvement, driving AI‑first architecture and rapid delivery across a fully remote global workforce.

Key responsibilities

• Define and own Toptal’s AI technology strategy, including model selection, fine‑tuning, harness design, retrieval, context engineering, and cost control.
• Build and maintain the full technical architecture, ensuring scalability, reliability, and responsible AI practices.
• Lead resourcing and workforce planning: scope roadmaps, size teams, set hiring standards, and recruit A‑players.
• Drive agentic engineering at scale, measuring AI quality through evaluations, regression suites, and review loops.
• Collaborate with Product to expose core business logic via modular interfaces and oversee platform modernization.

Required profile

• 15+ years of progressive engineering leadership, including CTO or VP of Engineering experience.
• Hands‑on expertise in modern AI engineering: foundation models, agentic architectures, fine‑tuning, and production deployment.
• Proven track record of scaling AI systems with measurable impact on cost, cycle time, quality, or revenue.
• Experience leading globally distributed, remote engineering teams in high‑growth, multi‑tenant platforms.
• Strong communication skills and ability to create and sell technical strategy.

Required skills

• Foundation model development and fine‑tuning
• Agentic system design and orchestration
• Retrieval‑augmented generation and context engineering
• Distributed systems and cloud infrastructure at scale
• Service architecture, data‑intensive applications, and secure‑by‑design principles