Chief Technology Officer - Remote

CONFIDENTIAL SEARCH

Chief Technology Officer

Full-Time  |  Remote  |  Light Travel (~5%)

Our client is an early-stage, pre-revenue startup building an audience-intelligence platform for the entertainment industry, applying data and machine learning to help predict and improve audience response to creative work across TV, film, and publishing. Founded by a small, highly capable team with deep entertainment and media expertise, the company has just closed its funding round and is beginning to build out its core technology.

Our client is seeking a hands-on, full-time Chief Technology Officer to own the architecture and build the systems that will power the company's audience-intelligence platform from the ground up. This is the company's first technical hire, reporting directly to the founders, with the mandate to turn an early conceptual architecture into a working, scalable product.

In the first six months, this person will build a working prototype of the company's core instrument, validate it against real data, and begin building out the technical team beneath them.

        Own technical architecture end-to-end, building systems designed to scale over the long term rather than a one-off proof of concept.

        Build a working prototype of the company's audience-intelligence instrument within the first 6 months, validated against real data.

        Apply machine learning and data science to messy, unstructured, and often subjective human-preference data to identify meaningful behavioral patterns.

        Design data schemas and scoring frameworks for qualitative, variable inputs where clean structure doesn't already exist.

        Translate technical concepts clearly for non-technical stakeholders, including supporting the CEO in explaining the technology to prospective clients.

        Partner closely with the co-founders to shape the product roadmap and define the eventual consumer-facing product and client experience.

        Begin building and leading the technical team as the company scales past the initial build.

        Stay hands-on and flexible as the product and technical direction evolve based on early data and findings.

        Experience in early-stage AI/ML environments; 0-to-1 experience building and scaling systems from scratch is essential.

        Background applying AI/ML to ambiguous, sparse, or subjective data, ideally in a recommendation-engine, matching-system, or behavioral-modeling context.

        Comfort working with messy, unstructured, or highly variable data, not just clean, well-structured pipelines.

        Experience with large language models (LLMs) and an interest in creative approaches to categorizing and scoring qualitative data.

        Strong communicator, able to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences and collaborate closely with founders.

        Patient, collaborative, and open to significant input and questions from non-technical leadership; not a dogmatic engineer.

        Entertainment industry background is not required.

        Must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.

Location:  Remote

Work arrangement:  Full-time, remote; light travel (~5%), including occasional on-site trips

Contract type:  Full-time, permanent

Compensation:  $200,000 to $225,000 base, depending on experience, plus a modest signing bonus

Equity:  Equity will be part of the total compensation package; specifics to be finalized

Benefits:  To be confirmed

This is a rare opportunity to own the technical foundation of a company solving a genuinely hard, interesting problem at the intersection of creativity and data, with direct access to top-tier relationships across the entertainment industry. The team is lean, smart, and moves fast, with a flat, open-door culture that lets the data shape the product.

This search is being conducted confidentially on behalf of our client by Escalon Recruiting. To apply or learn more, please contact us directly, the identity of the hiring company will be shared with qualified candidates as the process progresses.

 

recruiting@escalon.services

Location: Remote

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