Chief of Staff to the CTO

Job description

We’re looking for a Chief of Staff to the CTO Intercept is an award-winning B2B marketing agency specializing in creating impactful digital content, creative, and campaigns that engage IT and business decision-makers. We work with some of the largest enterprise technology companies in the world, including Microsoft, SAP, Lenovo, Intel, AMD, Cisco and more, helping them connect with their target audiences in meaningful ways. As a Certified Great Place to Work, we foster a collaborative and innovative environment where employees excel. With a fully remote workplace, we provide our team the flexibility they need to thrive both at home and at work. ROLE OVERVIEW : The Chief of Staff to the CTO is a hybrid role: half deputy, half engineering leader. You will represent the CTO in meetings the CTO cannot attend, and you will directly manage the Solutions Engineering pod that carries our technical client work. This is not a note-taking job. When you sit in a client meeting with Microsoft, SAP or Cisco in place of the CTO, you are expected to answer technical questions, commit to scope, and be trusted to have made the right call. That means you need real engineering depth alongside the presence to hold a room of enterprise stakeholders. Inside the agency, you own delivery, hiring and headcount for the pod, and you bring the CTO a clear recommendation on the AI tooling our teams should be using. You will provide portfolio and progress updates on all technical projects and innovation initiatives to the executive leadership team. Responsibilities : Stand in for the CTO: Attend internal leadership meetings, client calls and technical reviews on the CTO’s behalf. You will make decisions in the room within an agreed scope, record what was decided, and escalate only what truly needs the CTO. Manage the Solutions Engineering pod: You own the pod’s goals, delivery commitments and the growth of the people on it, and you step in when a client engagement is off track. Stay hands-on: Review solution architectures and technical proposals before they reach a client. Read the code when a decision is contested. You do not need to be the best engineer in the room, but you do need to know when an estimate or a design is wrong. Own client-facing technical conversations: Run scoping and solutioning sessions with enterprise accounts, translate what the client actually needs into work the pod can deliver, and defend the timeline when someone pushes back. Evaluate AI tooling and recommend what we adopt: Run the hands-on evaluation and vetting of AI tools, then bring the CTO a recommendation with your reasoning and what you rejected. The CTO makes the call on agency-wide direction, and you help land whatever is chosen. Own portfolio and resource management: Keep a current view of every project and initiative the technical team is running, and report on status, risk and progress to the CTO and the leadership team. You forecast where we will be short on people, flag it before it becomes a missed date, and decide who works on what. Hire and grow the pod: Own recruiting, interviewing and onboarding for Solutions Engineering. You decide who joins and how the team is shaped as the work grows. Run the CTO’s operating cadence: Set the agenda for technical planning, keep a written record of open decisions and their owners, and chase the follow-through so nothing quietly dies between meetings. Connect engineering to the account teams: Sit between client services and the Solutions Engineering pod so commitments made to clients match what the team can actually build, and so engineering context reaches the people who talk to the client. Qualifications: Four or more years in a technical role: with a track record of owning technical work end to end rather than being handed tasks. A hands-on engineering background: in solutions engineering or software engineering. You have personally built and shipped systems, not only managed people who did. Working knowledge of the cloud platforms our clients run on: including AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. You can read an architecture diagram and name what will break first. Experience in front of enterprise clients: from pre-sales, solutions consulting, professional services or agency delivery. You have handled a difficult client meeting without your leadership present. Real experience evaluating AI tooling: including what you recommended, what you rejected and why, and how you got people to actually use the tools that were approved. Clear written communication: because much of this job is writing down decisions precisely enough that people who were not in the room can act on them. Sound judgment under ambiguity: specifically knowing which decisions you should make yourself and which ones belong with the CTO. Comfortable working fully remote across a distributed team, with occasional travel for client and team meetings. Nice to have: Experience managing resources and running performance management conversations. This is an asset rather than a requirement, and we will support you in building it if you have not done it before.