Deputy Chief Technology Officer

Position Overview

The Deputy Chief Technology Officer (Deputy CTO), Infrastructure & Security Engineering, serves as the principal deputy to the CTO. This executive position combines deep technical expertise with leadership responsibility across cloud infrastructure, advanced networking, and security engineering.

This role is accountable for ensuring that all technology platforms-including multi-account and multi-tenant cloud environments, network interconnectivity, shared services, and security frameworks-are designed, operated, and continuously improved to meet organizational goals for performance, reliability, security, compliance, and cost efficiency. The Deputy CTO frequently represents the CTO in executive discussions, customer engagements, and during high-priority incidents.

This position requires an on-site presence three days per week at the Phoenix office.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategic Direction

• Serve as the CTO's primary proxy for executive decision-making, leadership forums, and client-facing technical discussions.
• Translate product vision and technology roadmaps into actionable infrastructure, networking, and security strategies with clear, measurable results.
• Define and maintain technical standards, architectural patterns, and operational frameworks used across engineering teams.
• Coach and develop leadership across infrastructure, platform, networking, and security disciplines.

Infrastructure & Networking

• Oversee the design and operation of cloud networking environments (e.g., multi-VPC architectures, transit gateways, multi-region deployments).
• Lead hybrid connectivity solutions, including VPNs, routing protocols, DNS, and load balancing across distributed systems.
• Implement robust network segmentation and enforce least-privilege access models across tenants and environments.
• Drive infrastructure automation through Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform) to ensure consistency and scalability.
• Guide capacity planning, performance tuning, and reliability improvements for shared systems and services.

Security Engineering

• Design and enforce comprehensive security controls across networks and platforms, including Zero Trust principles and threat protection mechanisms.
• Establish hardening standards across operating systems, containers, and network components, and ensure timely vulnerability remediation.
• Align engineering practices with compliance frameworks such as CJIS, StateRAMP, FedRAMP, and SOC 2 in partnership with GRC teams.
• Lead incident response efforts related to infrastructure and networking, including root cause analysis and remediation planning.
• Oversee identity-driven access and federation solutions (e.g., SSO/MFA integrations) across internal and customer-facing systems.

Operations & Reliability

• Implement SRE best practices, including observability, service level objectives, alerting, and operational runbooks.
• Ensure high availability and disaster recovery capabilities meet defined RPO/RTO targets.
• Standardize CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and platform delivery with secure, auditable change processes.
• Coordinate cross-functional readiness for major releases, migrations, and customer launches.

Cost Optimization & Vendor Management

• Own budgets for infrastructure, networking, and security; drive cost optimization initiatives.
• Manage relationships with key vendors and service providers, including contract negotiation and performance oversight.

Compliance & Audit Support

• Ensure audit readiness by maintaining continuous documentation and evidence of engineering controls and processes.
• Support customer due diligence and security reviews by clearly articulating architecture and safeguards.

Team Leadership & Development

• Foster a culture of accountability, continuous learning, and operational excellence.
• Define organizational structure, staffing strategies, and career development paths across engineering teams.

Qualifications & Experience

• 10 years of progressive experience in technology leadership, with at least 7 years managing large-scale cloud infrastructure and networking environments.
• Demonstrated expertise in designing and operating complex, distributed cloud architectures and hybrid connectivity solutions.
• Proven track record in leading security engineering initiatives and managing incident response.

Technical Expertise

• Strong background in cloud platforms and networking, including AWS services, routing, and connectivity design.
• Experience with edge security, web application protection, encryption standards, and certificate management.
• Knowledge of enterprise firewall technologies and network segmentation strategies.
• Proficiency in automation tools (e.g., Terraform), version control workflows, and policy enforcement frameworks.
• Familiarity with observability platforms, SIEM/SOAR tools, and performance monitoring systems.
• Experience with CI/CD tools, container orchestration, and platform engineering practices.
• Working knowledge of operating systems, databases, and scripting languages.

Education & Certifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field (Master's preferred).
• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, CCNP (or equivalent), and AWS specialty certifications are strongly preferred.

Core Competencies

• Strong executive communication and ability to engage effectively with customers and auditors.
• Sound decision-making under pressure with a strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Ability to operate at both strategic and hands-on technical levels as needed.

Performance Indicators (Examples)

• Achievement of uptime and service-level objectives across critical systems.
• Improvements in incident detection and resolution times.
• Adoption of Infrastructure as Code and reduction in configuration drift.
• Efficiency in environment provisioning and deployment success rates.
• Optimization of infrastructure costs relative to usage.
• Audit readiness and successful compliance outcomes.
• Timely remediation of high-risk vulnerabilities.

Reporting Structure

This role reports directly to the Chief Technology Officer and collaborates closely with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Program Management, and Security/GRC teams.