Chief Technology Officer

About the position

As the top technology executive at Bezos Academy, you will lead an enterprise-wide, multi-disciplinary team which includes corporate IT, software engineering, systems architecture, product development, data science, research, data engineering, storage and management, instructional design, and more. Reporting directly to the President, you will serve as a key member of the senior executive team. In this position, you will ensure every Bezos Academy preschool and all national support teams have the hardware, software, processes, and technology standards in place to create lifelong positive impacts on the children attending our schools. You bring an insatiable drive for impact, and you have a proven track record of technical expertise, developing leaders, creating and coaching cohesive teams, and producing successful results. You enjoy solving human problems and understanding the user experience. You are skilled at designing and delivering quality technology products and solutions directly for customers as well as for internal stakeholders. Across your career, you have led, innovated, and delivered impressive results in a variety of situations, demonstrating your versatility and adaptability. You thrive in a start-up environment and can own both the strategic and tactical sides of cross objectives. You easily build relationships with all stakeholders, and you swiftly commit to the strategies needed to meet crucial deadlines. Above all, you are inspired by our mission to expand access to Montessori-inspired preschools in under-resourced communities nationwide. Over time, your team’s work will impact hundreds of teachers and other Bezos Academy employees, and thousands of children and their families, creating ripples of impact for generations to come.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience
• Fifteen or more years of relevant experience, including at least ten years of interdisciplinary team management across the spectrum of technology functions
• Proven track record of successfully developing and delivering technical products beloved by customers from the ground up, including choosing the software stack and assuming full accountability over national scalability, reliability, and ongoing performance
• Experience hiring, managing and developing diverse and high-performing technical teams
• Comfort and confidence managing through layers across a geographically distributed workforce, coaching leaders to deliver results that matter
• Experience leading technical teams in a high growth or start-up environment
• Track record of overseeing software development across the entire lifecycle, delivering successful products on time
• Exceptional communication and analytical skills, including the ability to identify and solve ambiguous and/or technical problems and then convey key insights back to diverse (and non-technical) audiences at all levels of an organization
• Ability to travel up to 20% of the time

Nice-to-haves

• Deep understanding of current technology trends, opportunities, and risks, including but not limited to regulatory requirements, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence capabilities
• Experience overseeing both software and hardware for a nationally or internationally-distributed organization with 20+ distinct physical locations and variable needs across teams
• Familiarity with best practices in cyber security and data security
• Fluency in the core concepts of data engineering, warehousing, and management along with data science and statistics
• Experience with web and mobile app design and development
• Experience developing direct to consumer (D2C) products or other B2B products that prioritize high-quality experiences for individual end users
• Experience in the education or education technology sectors or a related field
• Demonstrated personal commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion

Benefits

• 15 paid days of vacation
• 4 days of paid personal time off
• 7 paid days of sick (care) time
• 9 paid holidays
• 5 paid days off for an organization-wide winter break
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Life insurance
• Disability insurance
• 401(k) plan with a 4% employer contribution match
• Paid parental leave
• Employer-matched flexible spending account for dependent care