Chief Technology Officer
About 5app
5app is a fast-growing SaaS company delivering powerful learning and communications solutions for organisations around the world. We’ve built traction in the market with a portfolio of well-known brands, partnering with Hemsley Fraser, a global top 20 learning provider.
Now, we’re building our client base and growing to meet demand, so it’s an exciting time to join our team. We have an innovative, start-up culture and a friendly, sociable team – and we can’t wait to hear from you!
The role
5app is growing – and that means developing our offering and supporting our changing team. To help us succeed, we need a calm, supportive and collaborative senior technical person to support our 8-person development team and help build our overall technical capabilities.
As CTO, your focus is on building both the software architecture and team structure. This will enable us to have multiple teams and allow us to grow. Part of the challenge is to decide where new teams should be based and how they will interact with our predominantly London-based team.
You’ll be the technical voice of 5app, collaborating with stakeholders and all functions in the business to make sure we have the technical foundations for success.
Responsibilities
This is an interesting and varied role, encompassing technical leadership as well as shaping our culture, vision, and direction.
Technical team & capabilities
You will help create high-performing and inclusive teams, ensuring a mix of skills and diverse perspectives for the best collaboration and problem solving.
- Day-to-day operational management of hybrid teams
- Recruitment, coaching and professional development
- Setting and managing team performance objectives
- Maintaining effective team systems and processes, e.g. sprints & deployment
Technical leadership & direction
- Ensure system & architecture meets requirements for stability, performance, security, scalability and accessibility
- Maintain technical knowledge of our industry and competitors
- Identify and implement appropriate technical tools & systems
- Work with 5app engineers to ensure robust and efficient standard development processes
- Identify technology trends and potential solutions
- While this role is primarily a leadership role, we do anticipate the CTO spending some time being hands-on
Product development technical strategy
Provide senior technical input on requirements to the business and work with the engineering team to deliver solutions
Listening to all stakeholders to fully understand product and business objectives
Understand how development supports commercial growth and sales
Required skills and experience
Leadership & management
- Experience working as a team leader, head of development or similar
- Experience in a growing organisation e.g. from a single/small development team to multiple teams
- Working with onshore and offshore development teams
- Passionate about creating and nurturing high-performing teams
- Able to recruit, develop and retain excellent software engineers / developers
Product & industry
- Experience working in a B2B SaaS environment
- Knowledge of the learning technology sector would be considered desirable
Software development
- Principles and practice of modern development approaches and methodologies
- Enthusiasm for technology and a broad range of software engineering experience
- Production experience in a tech stack similar to ours:
- React, Node, MySQL
- Docker Swarm, Terraform, Circle CI, Jenkins, Datadog
- AWS (EC2, Lamda, S3, Aurora, SQS, SNS, CloudFront, CloudWatch…)
Benefits
5app has an innovative start-up culture and a friendly sociable team. We pay competitive salaries based on experience and offer flexible working hours for all staff, including an early finish on a Friday afternoon.
We have transitioned away from our London office to a fully remote working from home model for the foreseeable future, while we make plans for our new workplace in central London.
religion or disability.
Our values
- Agility – always learning and adapting
- Diversity – celebrating differences in people and perspectives
- People – value and respect each other
- Creativity – innovating with technology and design
- Heart – making a difference to our clients and wider society
Our culture is defined by our people.
In the 5app team, we truly value each other, and this means making sure every team member can thrive and feel encouraged and celebrated.
Inclusive recruitment processes are not only vital for business success, it’s an important part of our role in society. We’re working to create an environment that is friendly and inclusive for everyone – and we understand that it’s an ongoing process. We welcome applications from all kinds of people, particularly those currently underrepresented in the tech sector.
If you choose to apply for this role, we won’t discriminate against you on the basis of sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, age, religion or disability.
How to apply
If you feel you could be a good match for this role and are interested to find out more, please fill out the form below or email your CV and a cover letter to hello [at] 5app.com.
At 5app, we value attitude and cultural fit as well as skills and experience – if there’s any aspect of 5app or the job requirements you’re not sure about, please don’t hesitate to ask us questions before applying.