Chief Technology Officer
About the role
The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is a senior leadership role responsible for Mile 2’s technical vision, engineering execution, and innovation strategy. You will serve as the company’s senior-most technologist, reporting directly to the CEO, and will be deeply engaged both in high-level strategy and hands-on technical decisions.
Key Responsibilities
Define and own Mile 2’s technology strategy, roadmap, and architecture standards across all programs and internal initiatives.
Champion human-machine teaming principles throughout the software development lifecycle — ensuring technology decisions are grounded in how real users think, decide, and act.
Evaluate and guide adoption of emerging technologies including AI/ML, large language models, computer vision, and autonomous systems in the context of DoW use cases.
Maintain sufficient technical depth and credibility to review architectures, guide technical tradeoffs, mentor engineering leadership, and engage deeply in solution strategy when required.
Lead the strategic technical direction for integrated systems, specifically overseeing the convergence of custom software with hardware and embedded electronics for mission-critical environments.
Provide executive oversight for the full product development lifecycle of both cloud-native applications and edge-computing devices.
Establish and govern enterprise architecture standards, ensuring consistency, interoperability, and reuse across all programs and product lines.
Define and steward reusable technical frameworks, shared capabilities, and a productization strategy that evolves one-off program work into sustainable mission systems.
Align the capability roadmap with corporate growth priorities and prioritize technical investments (IRAD/R&D, infrastructure, tooling) against business outcomes.
Establish and enforce engineering best practices: code quality, DevSecOps pipelines, testing frameworks, and documentation standards appropriate for classified and unclassified environments.
Oversee technical delivery across active contracts, ensuring teams meet performance, schedule, and quality requirements.
Drive technical risk identification and mitigation across the portfolio.
Establish enterprise technical governance and standardize engineering processes and frameworks to improve delivery consistency across programs.
Reduce duplicate technical efforts and increase technical reuse across programs and business units.
Scale the engineering organization in step with company growth, maturing operations, hiring pipelines, and leadership bench depth.
Serve as a trusted technical advisor to DoW customers — translating complex mission problems into actionable software solutions.
Partner with Growth to lead technical volumes in proposal efforts, including architecting technical approaches and estimating level of effort.
Represent Mile 2’s capabilities at customer briefings, conferences, and inter-agency engagements.
Build and sustain relationships with DoW program offices, research labs (DARPA, AFRL), and key industry partners.
Shape Mile 2’s technical growth strategy and align IRAD/R&D investments with emerging market and mission opportunities.
Support strategic capture efforts as a senior technical voice — developing scalable service offerings and improving technical differentiation in competitive pursuits.
Drive successful transition of SBIR, OTA, and prototype efforts into programs of record and enduring mission capabilities.
Integrate user-centered design and human factors engineering into the core of Mile 2’s software development process.
Oversee UI/UX research activities — user interviews, usability testing, cognitive task analysis — and ensure findings directly shape system design.
Ensure that AI and automation features augment rather than replace operator decision-making, in line with DoW responsible AI principles.
Drive adoption of iterative, design-led development practices across engineering and product teams.
Advance Mile 2’s leadership in operational AI, trusted and explainable AI, and human-centered decision support systems for mission environments.
Lead and mature Mile 2’s Technical Steering Group (TSG), aligning technical direction across business units and domains.
Improve collaboration between AI/ML, platform engineering, CSE/HMT, mission applications, and delivery teams.
Drive enterprise technical alignment and reduce siloed development efforts.
Ensure TSG efforts support growth, delivery, capability evolution, and operational scale.
Required
Active Secret clearance (TS/SCI preferred); must be able to obtain and maintain clearance appropriate to contract requirements.
10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a technical leadership role (CTO, VP Engineering, Chief Architect, or equivalent).
Proven track record leading engineering teams across diverse disciplines, including software, firmware, and electronic systems integration.
Demonstrated experience delivering open-standards-based software solutions for DoW or other federal government customers.
Deep proficiency in modern software engineering practices: open standards and open-architecture design, cloud-native development (GCP), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and agile/DevSecOps methodologies.
Hands-on experience with AI/ML integration in production systems — NLP, computer vision, decision-support, or reinforcement learning applications.
Strong command of user-centered design principles and experience working alongside UI/UX researchers and designers.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to present complex technical topics to both technical and non-technical audiences including senior government officials.
Experience supporting capture and proposal strategy, technical solutioning, customer engagement, and technical growth planning.
Experience scaling engineering organizations, maturing technical operations, standardizing delivery frameworks, and operationalizing technical governance.
Demonstrated experience transitioning R&D, SBIR, or prototype technologies into scalable operational environments.
Experience with edge/disconnected environments, DDIL operations, secure mission systems, and/or operational deployment realities.
Preferred
Experience with cognitive systems engineering, human-machine teaming, human factors engineering, or human-autonomy interaction research.
Familiarity with DoW acquisition frameworks: JCIDS, DAS, Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP), or Other Transaction Authority (OTA).
Experience with RDT&E programs, SBIR/STTR, or rapid prototyping efforts.
Background in cognitive science, human factors, software engineering, or applied AI research.
Prior military service or deep operational understanding of warfighter workflows.
Experience growing and leading engineering organizations of 10–100 people.
Familiarity with DoW zero trust architecture, RMF/ATO processes, and cross-domain solutions.
Zero Trust Architecture and modern platform engineering (Kubernetes, service mesh, GitOps).
Experience delivering secure cloud mission systems and supporting edge/disconnected operations.
Experience with AI governance and explainable AI frameworks.
Experience scaling small-to-mid-size GovCon organizations.