Data Science & Engineering Experts (“DSE”) is a senior-only boutique consultancy and Delaware C-corp that prepares U.S. regulated financial institutions, including banks, credit unions, insurers, broker-dealers, RIAs, and fintechs, for AI governance, security, and regulatory compliance across NIST AI RMF, NIST CSF 2.0, ISO/IEC 42001, the EU AI Act, SR 11-7 model risk management, GLBA, NYDFS Part 500, SEC Reg S-P, and CCPA/CPRA.
DSE delivers hands-on AI security red-teaming and audit-readiness engagements, is active in federal contracting, operates PrivateStack, a private multi-model LLM SaaS platform, and authors open-source IP that must be protected. The company’s technology estate is central to both client delivery and product growth, and this role will own and lead the technology function.
Role Summary
The Fractional Chief Technology Officer is DSE’s first dedicated technology and product executive. This is a founding-caliber, part-time executive role reporting directly to the CEO.
The CTO will own technology strategy, platform architecture, engineering leadership, and execution across PrivateStack, internal systems, and supporting technical assets. The role is compensated through equity and success-based cash fees tied to closed, paid business, rather than a traditional salary or fixed monthly retainer.
Mandate
- Product and Platform Ownership – Define and own the technical roadmap and architecture for PrivateStack and related technical assets that support DSE’s AI governance, security, and compliance services.
- Engineering Leadership – Build and lead a lean, senior-oriented engineering capability and establish standards for software quality, delivery, and operational discipline.
- Security, Compliance, and Reliability – Design and maintain a technical environment aligned with the expectations of regulated financial institutions and federal customers.
- Commercial Partnership and Equity Stake – Operate as a commercial partner to the CEO, aligning technical decisions with revenue, delivery capability, and long-term enterprise value.
This is an operating role. The Fractional CTO owns the technology function end to end, not just architecture reviews or advisory input.
Key Responsibilities
Product and Platform Architecture
- Own the end-to-end architecture for PrivateStack as a private multi-model LLM SaaS platform for regulated institutions, including tenant isolation, data boundaries, observability, logging, and auditability.
- Design secure, scalable technical patterns that support DSE’s consulting services, including environments for AI red-teaming, evidence-generation workflows, and reusable delivery components.
- Develop and maintain the platform and technology roadmap in close collaboration with the CEO, aligning technical priorities to revenue opportunities and delivery commitments.
- Select, standardize, and periodically reassess core platforms, tools, and services across cloud, data, AI/LLM infrastructure, CI/CD, and observability.
- Document key architectural decisions in a manner that is clear, defensible, and practical for client IT, security, risk, and audit stakeholders.
Engineering Leadership and Delivery
- Build and manage a small, senior-leaning engineering bench made up of contractors, firms, and future internal hires as the company scales.
- Establish standards for secure software development, code quality, testing, deployment, change management, and incident response.
- Implement lightweight but real delivery discipline, including backlog management, release planning, prioritization, and post-incident review practices appropriate for a high-leverage boutique firm.
- Remain sufficiently hands-on to review design decisions, unblock critical technical issues, and make build-versus-buy-versus-partner decisions when needed.
- Track and report practical delivery metrics such as deployment cadence, cycle time, change failure rate, and time to restore service.
Security, Compliance, and Infrastructure
- Design and maintain cloud and data architectures consistent with the expectations of regulated financial institutions, including access control, secrets management, key management, logging, backup, recovery, and environment segmentation.
- Support DSE’s technical alignment with applicable client expectations and frameworks, including NIST CSF 2.0, NIST AI RMF, privacy obligations, and other control-driven commitments reflected in client contracts.
- Ensure that technical controls and documentation support DSE’s contractual commitments around privacy, data handling, audit support, and security representations.
- Establish practical evidence-generation capabilities, including configuration baselines, deployment records, access logs, and vulnerability-management artifacts, to support client reviews and audits.
- Evaluate and integrate security tooling required both for DSE’s internal posture and for PrivateStack as a trusted platform serving regulated customers.
Commercial and Client-Facing Enablement
- Partner with the CEO in pre-sales and late-stage opportunities where platform architecture, integration requirements, security posture, and delivery feasibility materially influence deal outcomes.
- Translate complex technical concepts into clear business language for procurement, IT, security, compliance, and risk stakeholders.
- Advise on pricing, scoping, solution feasibility, and delivery risk for technical portions of proposals, Statements of Work, and client discussions.
- Prioritize roadmap items and integrations that support near-term revenue, client retention, renewals, and strategic growth.
- Provide technical support on federal and public-sector opportunities where architectural choices, hosting models, or compliance expectations may affect competitiveness.
Internal Platforms and Data
- Design pragmatic internal data and analytics infrastructure that supports consulting delivery, reporting, automation, and product telemetry.
- Standardize development, staging, and production environments that balance speed of iteration with security and reliability.
- Ensure open-source components, including DSE-authored projects, are integrated in a supportable and license-aware manner.
- Identify and implement automation that reduces manual work for the CEO and consulting team, including environment setup, reporting workflows, and evidence packaging.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering and technology leadership, including at least 3–5 years in a senior technology leadership role such as CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, or equivalent.
- Demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating secure, multi-tenant SaaS or platform solutions, including architecture across application, data, API, identity, and infrastructure layers.
- Hands-on background with modern cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, along with data platforms and contemporary AI/LLM-adjacent tooling.
- Experience supporting enterprise or regulated customers, preferably regulated financial institutions or similarly control-driven environments.
- Ability to operate as a near-solo technology function, including setting priorities, making architectural decisions, and executing without a large internal team.
- Willingness and ability to engage as an independent contractor (1099) on an equity-plus-success-fee basis, without a guaranteed base salary or immediate fixed monthly retainer.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building or leading LLM, AI, or data platforms in privacy-sensitive or regulated environments.
- Familiarity with AI governance and risk concepts, including NIST AI RMF, model-risk thinking, or similar governance frameworks.
- Experience supporting federal or public-sector work, including understanding of cloud deployment constraints, customer security expectations, or procurement-driven technical requirements.
- Prior startup, boutique consultancy, or fractional CTO experience building a technology function from an early stage.
- Strong grounding in secure software development and close collaboration with security, risk, or compliance stakeholders.
Pay: $150.00 - $500.00 per hour
Application Question(s):
- Do you have at least 10 years of professional software engineering experience, including a minimum of 3 years in a senior technology leadership role (e.g., CTO, VP Engineering, or Head of Engineering) at a SaaS, data, or infrastructure-focused company?
- Have you personally led the design and operation of a secure, multi-tenant cloud-based platform (including architecture, security, observability, and reliability) that served enterprise or regulated customers?
- Have you worked directly with regulated financial institutions or similarly regulated industries (e.g., banks, insurers, broker-dealers, or fintechs), engaging their technology, security, or risk teams on architecture and security topics?
- Are you willing to engage as an independent contractor (1099) in a part-time fractional CTO role with no guaranteed base salary or fixed monthly retainer, compensated primarily through equity and success-based fees tied to closed, paid business?
Work Location: Remote
