Director, Office of the CTO

About the role

The Director, Office of the CTO will help the CTO and Technology Leadership Team create alignment, clarity, and organizational conditions that allow teams to deliver value.  This will be accomplished by helping leadership keep their highest priority work visible, make decisions on time and with the right clarity, and follow through on transversal commitments. You will maintain a clear view of strategic priorities, prepare issues for executive decisions, and turn complex information into useful executive and board reporting.

You will work laterally across functions and departments, often with leaders whose priorities differ. Success requires building trust, influencing without direct authority, clarifying tradeoffs, securing commitments, and helping to enable teams and leaders to work together toward shared business outcomes.

What you'll do

• Maintain the strategic portfolio. Work with Somos' Chief Technology Officer and Product & Technology leaders to identify priorities requiring leadership oversight. Keep an owner-validated view of each priority’s outcome, next milestone, dependencies, capacity constraints, material risks, and decisions needed.
• Prepare decisions and drive follow-through. Define the question, assemble the facts, present options and tradeoffs, and identify who must decide and by when. Document decisions, confirm action owners, and track commitments to closure.
• Run decision-focused leadership reviews. Set agendas and pre-reads for Technology leadership, portfolio, and planning meetings. Focus discussion on changes, risks, dependencies, and choices rather than routine status updates.
• Foster cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement.  Partner with Product, Finance, People, Sales, and Strategy Operations. Promote shared objectives, transparency, and accountability.  Reconcile competing assumptions, negotiate clear handoffs, and escalate unresolved conflicts to the right leader within an Agile-defined triad of delivery.
• Develop executive, board, and company-wide reporting. Shape the storyline, write the materials, and select measures that explain Technology outcomes, investment, delivery timelines, and risk. Confirm underlying facts with accountable leaders before they are presented.

The CTO and functional leaders retain authority for strategy, technical choices, budgets, and delivery. The Strategic Operations team manages defined programs. This Director owns the shared visibility, decision preparation, operating cadence, and follow-through that connect their work.

What you'll bring

• Experience improving planning, portfolio oversight, or decision-making in a multi-team technology organization, with examples of measurable or observable results.
• A demonstrated ability to influence senior colleagues across functions without relying on reporting authority.
• Enough fluency in product, engineering, AI, operations, and security to ask informed questions and explain business implications without claiming to be the technical expert.
• Excellent executive writing and presentation skills, including the ability to build a concise decision brief or board narrative from complex or conflicting inputs.
• Sound judgment with sensitive information and comfort working across time zones in a virtual-first environment.
• A view of AI literacy within a modern Product & Engineering organization is expected.
• This experience is typically gained through a Bachelor’s Degree plus 12 years of related experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Experience in telecommunications, digital identity, or another trust-critical industry is valuable but not required. 

What success looks like

In the first 90 days, you will agree on the role’s charter with the CTO, establish the leadership review cadence, and create a dependable view of top priorities and open decisions. You will also establish baselines for action closure, decision turnaround, unresolved dependencies, and milestone performance.

Over the first year, leaders should see fewer overdue decisions and late surprises, stronger follow-through on agreed actions, and executive and board materials that arrive on time and make the important choices clear.

Salary & benefits

• Salary Range: $175,000 - $190,000
• Bonus: 15% Annual Bonus based on Company and Personal Goal Achievements
• 100% Company Paid Medical, Dental and Vision insurance for you and your family! 
• 401(k) Savings Plan with Employer Contribution 
• 100% Company Paid Short- and Long-Term Disability 
• 100% Company Paid Life Insurance 
• Flexible Time Off program 
• A Variety of Voluntary Benefits

Interview Process Note: As part of the final interview stage, candidates may be asked to meet with members of the Somos team in person. 

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive list of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of this position. Aspects of this job description may change at any time, with or without notice.

This job description is not intended as and does not create an employment contract. The organization maintains its status as an at-will employer.  Employees can be terminated for any reason not prohibited by law.

About Somos, Inc.

Somos is an innovative technology company that ensures that phone calls and text messages can be trusted. Consumers don’t want spammers and fraudsters to reach them through their devices, and businesses don’t want their legitimate phone calls ignored. The solution? Developing stronger trusted digital identities. And that’s where you come in!