Chief of Staff, Technical

Job description

The role Gridsight is looking for a Technical Chief of Staff to work directly with - and report to - our CEO and CPO on the product and technical priorities that matter most to the company. This role is based in Sydney, Australia. This is not a coordination or project-administration role. It is a hands-on company-building role for a technically credible operator who can move between strategy, product, engineering and execution - bringing clarity to ambiguous problems, helping teams make better decisions and driving critical work through to shipped outcomes. Your mandate Drive the highest-leverage product and technical priorities Own a small number of the company’s most important product and technical initiatives at any time, from an unclear problem to a measurable outcome. Work across product strategy, technical discovery, architecture and trade-offs, AI, data, platform, infrastructure and whatever becomes highest leverage as the business evolves. Structure problems from first principles, form hypotheses, get close to the code, data, customer and system, recommend a direction and execute. Step into critical work without an obvious owner, solve it, then establish the ownership and operating mechanism needed to make it repeatable. Turn strategy into shipped outcomes Translate CEO and CPO priorities into clear product and technical plans, decisions, owners, milestones and dependencies. Align product, engineering, design, data and commercial teams around the outcome, the trade-offs and the path to delivery. Surface product and technical risk early, unblock cross-functional delivery and ensure decisions happen at the right level. Go deep enough to test assumptions, follow the work through delivery and verify that what ships creates customer and business value. Turn successful one-off solutions into reusable mechanisms without creating bureaucracy. Create leverage for the CEO and CPO Synthesize complex product and technical context into crisp, decision-ready recommendations. Pressure-test assumptions, identify the missing question and bring independent judgement without ego. Take full ownership of important work that does not require the CEO or CPO, creating more time for the things only they can do. Represent the CEO and CPO selectively in internal and external discussions, maintaining context and alignment across stakeholders. Build the trust and context to operate with minimal oversight while knowing when a decision or risk must be escalated. Strengthen the product and technical operating system Build lightweight planning, review, decision and metrics cadences that increase speed and accountability. Improve how product bets, technical investments and trade-offs are made, communicated and revisited. Connect customer and market insight to the roadmap and technical priorities, and translate technical reality back into company strategy. Create clear feedback loops across quality, speed, reliability, adoption and customer outcomes. Use automation, AI and modern tooling pragmatically to increase leverage across product and engineering. What success looks like The company’s highest-leverage product and technical priorities move faster and ship measurable outcomes. The CEO and CPO have materially more leverage and make better, faster decisions with clearer technical and product context. Teams are aligned on outcomes; dependencies, risks, decisions and owners are visible and actively managed. Important work no longer stalls between functions or falls into gaps in ownership. Customer and market insight shape product choices, while technical reality shapes company strategy. The product and technical operating system increases velocity without adding unnecessary process. What will make you phenomenal You have a strong technical foundation and can reason credibly about software systems, architecture, data, AI, quality, security and reliability. You have strong product judgement: you obsess over the problem and the outcome, not the output. You see no walls. If something matters, you find a path through functional boundaries, hierarchy and uncertainty. You are a first-principles problem solver who seeks truth, challenges assumptions and builds answers from the ground up. You drive and effect change. You own outcomes rather than producing recommendations from the sidelines. You move fluently between strategy and execution—from an executive decision or technical trade-off to the analysis, prototype, document or follow-up required to make it real. You are willing and able to get hands-on with code, data, prototypes and AI tools when that is the fastest way to learn or unblock progress. You communicate technical complexity clearly, exercise sound judgement and earn trust with engineers, executives, customers and partners. Experience in software engineering, technical product, technical program leadership or a founder’s office in a high-growth startup is useful; evidence of exceptional ownership and problem solving matters more than a conventional pedigree. Electricity grids are undergoing the most significant transformation in a century. The shift to renewables, the proliferation of rooftop solar, batteries and EVs, and the increasing complexity of distribution networks are forcing utilities to operate their grids in fundamentally new ways. Gridsight's vertical SaaS platform uses data, ML and AI to help grid operators modernise their operations and unlock transformational new capabilities. We deliver visibility into the grid edge, faster renewable connections, and real-time orchestration of distributed energy. The opportunity is enormous ($1B+ ARR). We're embedded with over 50% of Australia's distribution networks, more than 30% in New Zealand, and have 1 of the top 5 utilities in the US as our lighthouse. Airtree led our Series A, we grew ARR 3.4x in the past 6 months, we just closed our Series B led by a major US fund, and we're on the path to build the first truly generational utility software company. We are a team of builders. What unites us is that we’re curious, hungry and obsessed with maximising the impact we can deliver to Gridsight and the energy transition. If that sounds like you, come join us!