Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
San Francisco, CA
Potential for Austin, TX–based hire
Location: Downtown San Francisco (In-Office when required)
Type: Full-Time
Industry: EV Mobility | Autonomous Vehicle Technology | Car Sharing
About Autzu:
Autzu is building the future of sustainable, efficient, and safe urban transportation. We develop proprietary in-house hardware and software systems to manage and scale EV and autonomous rideshare fleets.
With operations in the U.S. and Canada along with expansion plans into Europe and Asia, Autzu is creating the infrastructure layer for next-generation fleet and autonomous vehicle operations.
We are now entering a critical phase: strengthening and evolving our existing fleet platform into an Autonomous-Ready Operations Hub capable of supporting multi-city and international growth.
The Opportunity
We are seeking a hands-on, execution-focused Chief Technology Officer to lead Autzu’s engineering function through its next evolution.
This is not a “greenfield build from scratch” CTO role.
This is a platform ownership and transformation mandate.
You will:
• Own and harden our existing production fleet and operations platform
• Improve reliability, data integrity, and system observability
• Reduce technical debt without disrupting live operations
• Architect the transition to an AV-ready, multi-city operational layer
• Build and scale the engineering team to support global expansion
You must be comfortable operating in a live production environment while modernizing architecture in parallel.
Core Mandate
Keep the current fleet software running reliably while refactoring, modularizing, and extending it into a scalable, secure, AV-ready operations platform.
This includes:
• Stabilizing uptime and data quality across the platform
• Introducing service boundaries and APIs without a “big bang rewrite”
• Building a migration path toward a more modular, multi-city architecture
• Establishing engineering rigor across CI/CD, testing, release management, and on-call processes
• Managing contractors while hiring and developing key internal engineering leaders
What You’ll Do
• Define and own Autzu’s technology vision and roadmap alongside the CEO
• Lead backend, frontend, mobile, and embedded/IoT engineering functions
• Architect scalable systems to manage EV and future autonomous fleets
• Oversee integrations with marketplace APIs, payments, telematics, charging networks, maintenance vendors, identity systems, and compliance reporting
• Implement operational rigor across observability, incident response, audit logging, and security
• Represent Autzu’s technical strategy in fundraising and partner discussions
• Foster a builder culture grounded in accountability and execution
Must-Have Experience
• 7+ years of software engineering experience
• 3–5+ years in engineering leadership (Head of Engineering, VP Eng, CTO, or similar)
• Proven ownership of a live production fleet or operations platform
• Experience stabilizing reliability and data quality in an existing system
• Demonstrated ability to reduce technical debt while adding new capabilities
• Experience with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, APIs, and system integrations
• Strong operational discipline around uptime, release cycles, and security
Bonus experience in mobility, rideshare, fleet management, or autonomous vehicle environments is highly preferred.
Nice to Have
• Hardware/software or IoT integration experience
• Marketplace platform architecture
• Experience in compliance-heavy or regulated environments
• Experience scaling systems across multiple geographies
What We Offer
• Competitive compensation + meaningful equity
• The opportunity to define the technical backbone of a category-defining mobility company
• Direct exposure to executive strategy and fundraising
• The ability to lead Autzu into autonomous fleet operations
