Chief Technology & Product Officer - #145109

In a nutshell

As our Chief Technology & Product Officer (CTPO), your role is pivotal to the current and future success of BrightLocal. As a product-led growth (PLG) business, we live or die based on the quality and value of our product to our customers.

As our CTPO you are ultimately responsible for ensuring that our products deliver incredible value and reliable infrastructure that meets our customers’ changing needs better and faster than our competitors.

Technology and innovation are at the core of our business. You will facilitate technological advancements and foster a culture of innovation, ensuring we stay ahead of industry trends and deliver cutting-edge solutions. Your leadership in this area will be crucial in maintaining our competitive edge and enabling sustainable growth.

You play a central role in the business, owning the customer experience and collaborating with senior leaders to set the product and technical vision and strategy.

You will lead the combined Product, Design and Engineering (PDE) teams - based in the UK, Poland, and Ukraine. You will empower and support your teams to develop clear, customer-focused roadmaps and ensure that we deliver continuous value to customers through fast and effective product delivery.

You will collaborate closely with colleagues across the business, gathering and sharing customer & market insights that increase our collective understanding and inform actions that drive growth and commercial success.

You will be responsible for compliance, security and disaster recovery strategies both in terms of people and technology to ensure we meet demand of our largest customers.

As part of our next chapter, our current CTO & Cofounder will transition into the role of Technical Advisor & Cofounder, with a core focus on leading our AI innovation strategy. This includes architecting and scaling an AI-powered insights engine to drive our SaaS platform and championing company-wide AI adoption.

As CTPO, you’ll collaborate closely with the Technical Advisor to integrate AI into our product roadmap, technical architecture, and internal workflows—bringing pragmatic innovation to life for our customers and teams.

Vision and Strategy

• Deeply understand and appreciate the needs, challenges, and opportunities faced by our customers and employees.
• Work in collaboration with the C-Suite, Head of Product, Product Design Lead and Engineering Managers to craft a clear and compelling long-term vision for our products and services that meet the needs of customers better than any of our competitors.
• Devise a simple and effective product strategy that delivers maximum value to customers, and strong commercial growth to the business over the short-medium term.
• Ensure that the product vision & strategy is aligned with our mission and enables the business to continue to grow in a sustainable, profitable manner.
• Ensure that the technology strategy aligns with and supports the overall product vision and business objectives.
• Take every opportunity to communicate the product vision to the business, ensuring high levels of understanding and buy-in within every team.
• Foster a customer-centric culture in the business, proactively sharing all insights and ensuring feedback from all customer-facing teams is used to inform product decisions.
• Collaborate with the Technical Advisor to identify high-impact AI opportunities across product, customer experience, and operational processes, ensuring AI is integrated in a responsible, scalable, and commercially viable manner.

Product Delivery

• Guide and support your Head of Product, Product Design Lead and Engineering Managers (direct reports) to ensure we deliver on our strategy as quickly and effectively as possible.
• Ensure we have clear and robust processes at all stages of the product, design and engineering life-cycle, from ideation and validation to development, testing, feedback, and iteration.
• Foster a culture that balances being data-driven with a bias for action and risk-taking, enabling us to deliver incremental value to customers quickly and often.
• Empower your team to own and manage the product roadmap, ensuring the wider business has a clear view and understanding of progress and changes at all times.
• Ensure you have the right blend of talent, experience, and team structure to enable your team to successfully execute the product and technical strategies.
• Collaborate closely with the Head of Product, Product Design Lead and Engineering Managers to establish efficient processes for product development, decision prioritisation, and product launches.
• Collaborate closely with the Engineering Managers and the Engineering team to ensure we have the right tools, processes, and ceremonies for fast and efficient product delivery.
• Establish product and technical KPIs for cross-functional alignment; examples include customer satisfaction scores, uptime, etc.
• Foster a culture of innovation and iteration, ensuring testing and data-driven decision-making is a priority, utilising test results and insights to shape impactful products.
• Oversee the architectural integrity, scalability, and security of our technology platforms to support our product and business goals.
• Support the Engineering team and work with them to help them adopt best practices in coding, testing, and deployment to ensure high-quality product delivery.
• Build effective relationships and working processes with marketing, sales, Customer Success, and Customer Support to ensure we bring new products and updates to market effectively.
• Work with the Technical Advisor and your engineering leaders to assess, pilot, and embed AI tooling and models into the product and engineering stack and internal tooling, balancing speed of adoption with long-term maintainability.
• Champion data and infrastructure readiness for AI/ML integration and ensure teams are supported in adopting AI-driven workflows.

Team Leadership

• Embody and champion our company beliefs every day and be a role model to everyone in the business.
• Working with the Head of Product, Product Design Lead and Engineering Managers, you'll nurture a high-performing team through regular check-ins and 1-1s.
• Inspire the Product, Design and Engineering teams (engineers, QAs, product managers, and UX designers) and guide their thinking and actions from design to delivery to feedback and iteration.
• Lead the team to meet roadmaps and objectives through effective management and communication.
• Ensure individuals reach their potential by providing thought leadership and investing in continuous improvement and career growth.
• Drive a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Mentor and develop the Product and Engineering leadership team, including the Head of Product, Product Leads, Engineering Managers, and Tech Leads, to enhance their skills and career growth.
• Help evolve the team's capabilities and mindset around AI, supporting hiring, upskilling, and process adaptation to make AI a natural part of how we deliver value.

You’ll need to be

• A technical visionary: You have a deep understanding of modern software development and a clear point of view on how to pragmatically harness AI/ML to unlock product innovation, boost team productivity, and deliver scalable value.
• An advocate: You champion agile, iterative delivery across both traditional software and AI initiatives, helping cross-functional teams embrace experimentation while managing risk and ethical considerations.
• A role model for our culture and beliefs.
• An inspiring leader and supportive manager.
• A true player-coach.
• Open-minded and hungry to learn.
• A great collaborator.
• An excellent communicator.
• A strong bias for action.
• Great with analytics.
• Big ambitions.

You’ll need to have

• Extensive experience in B2B SaaS software development and leading Product and Engineering teams in a fast-growing environment.
• Prior experience in a CTPO, CTO or CPO role with a focus on product.
• Proven track record of successfully creating and executing a strategic vision.
• Demonstrable experience across the whole product lifecycle.
• Demonstrable experience of leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance product capabilities, customer experience, or operational efficiency.
• Proven track record of designing and implementing scalable, secure, and AI-ready technology architectures.
• Extensive experience of working with Agile development methodologies and, in particular, Scrum.
• Familiarity with modern AI/ML tools and ethical deployment practices, with a pragmatic approach to integrating AI into production environments.
• Familiarity with our tech stack: Linux, React, PHP, Golang, Jira, GitHub, monday.com, MySQL, Elastic Search, TestRail, Jenkins, Redis, RabbitMQ, REST APIs and microservices. Understanding of on-premise and cloud infrastructures.
• A passion for technology and innovation, especially in harnessing emerging technologies like AI to deliver real-world value.