Remote opportunity at
ToptalChief Technology Officer - US-Based
Toptal operates a worldwide network of business, design and technology talent that helps companies scale teams on demand. This full-time, remote Chief Technology Officer role is…
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About This Role
Toptal operates a worldwide network of business, design and technology talent that helps companies scale teams on demand. This full-time, remote Chief Technology Officer role is based in the United States and sits at the top of technical leadership across product and engineering. The CTO drives execution across both groups and places AI at the core of what the company builds. The posting describes the role as owning Toptal's full…
Job Description
Toptal operates a worldwide network of business, design and technology talent that helps companies scale teams on demand. This full-time, remote Chief Technology Officer role is based in the United States and sits at the top of technical leadership across product and engineering. The CTO drives execution across both groups and places AI at the core of what the company builds. The posting describes the role as owning Toptal's full technical architecture, built AI-first and guided by agentic engineering practice.
The CTO establishes the AI architecture and engineering standards the rest of the company will use, and owns the initiatives that move agents into production. The posting calls for a builder who can design and tune foundation models, engineer strong agent harnesses, and create methods that let engineering teams work faster without losing quality. The CTO takes part in design reviews and code work, sets technical direction, and runs regular meetings that convert strategy into production results. The CTO is the technical owner of every Toptal product and works with Product to make the central business logic available through modular interfaces.
Leadership duties include team design, resourcing and workforce planning. The CTO scopes the work, sizes teams, plans headcount and sequencing, defines the bar for each role, and develops people against it. The CTO is also responsible for measuring AI quality, including evaluations and regression suites, and for the cost of engineering and AI work.
The posting asks for fifteen or more years of engineering leadership, including substantial time as a CTO or in a VP of Engineering role. Candidates should have up-to-date, practical mastery of modern AI engineering and have agentic systems running at scale with measured outcomes. Leading teams spread across many countries and working remotely is a must-have. A bachelor's degree in a computing or engineering discipline is required. Applications and correspondence must be in English.
Responsibilities
- Define the platform's technology direction and the architecture beneath it, from model choice to retrieval and guardrails
- Bring agent-based engineering into talent matching, screening, onboarding, client delivery and back-office operations
- Build evaluation suites, regression tests and review processes that prove AI quality
- Rework build and operations processes so each engineer delivers more through AI-assisted work
- Choose team designs for an era when product, engineering and design roles overlap
- Break the roadmap into buildable pieces, plan headcount and meet hiring deadlines
- Manage engineering and AI spending, including inference and token costs
Requirements
- Fifteen or more years leading engineering, with real time served as CTO or as VP of Engineering
- Current, hands-on depth in foundation models, agents, harnesses, retrieval and evaluation, plus context design
- Agentic systems in production on core processes, with gains tracked as cost savings, faster delivery, quality or income
- Careful evaluation habits, with evidence showing a model, prompt or agent update really helped
- Command of model routing, self-hosted versus hosted economics, and portability across providers
- Hands-on experience replacing critical systems while the business keeps operating
- Track record leading teams spread across time zones at a technology or fast-growing company
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in a computing or engineering discipline is required; a graduate degree would be a clear plus
- Background running multi-tenant systems or high-traffic two-sided marketplaces is a major advantage
- Comfort writing production code and operating distributed systems and cloud infrastructure at large scale
Core Skills
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
Where is this role based?
The role is remote and the posting lists the United States as the location. Candidates need work authorization in the country when hired.
What leadership experience is required?
Fifteen or more years in engineering leadership, with senior-level service as a CTO or a VP of Engineering.
Is the role full-time and what is the pay?
The posting describes a full-time, exempt role. It does not state a salary or pay range.
What degree is required?
A bachelor's degree in a computing or engineering discipline is required. A graduate degree would be a clear plus.
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