Interim CTO / VP Engineering

Location: Remote (European Economic Area) · Type: Full-Time

SIROC embeds senior technical leadership inside companies where engineering execution needs to improve, and someone needs to own making that happen.

This is not one job; it's a rotation. In one engagement, you might be interim CTO for an early-stage company finding its footing. In the next, you're VP Engineering inside a mid-market or PE-backed company, restructuring how they ship. In between, you might be building something hard with our own engineers. Then back again.

What stays constant: you're the person in the room who understands both the technology and the people, and who's willing to say the uncomfortable thing when the comfortable answer would be easier. Our clients pay us for outcomes, not reassurance, and the deliverable of your work is a team that no longer needs you.

Who We Think You Are

Your story probably looks something like this.

You started as an engineer and grew into technical leadership by building real things and living with the consequences of your decisions. You chose architectures, hired engineers, shaped teams, and developed strong opinions about quality, ownership, and how software organizations should work.

You made calls with real money attached: build vs. buy, who to hire, who to let go, what to cut when the runway got short, and where technical debt was worth accepting. And you were still there when the results came in.

Maybe you carried the CTO title. Maybe you were VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, or employee #5 and never had the title at all. We care much more about the journey than the business card.

What we care about is what that journey taught you. And you came out of it with two things that are hard to fake.

• First: deep technology and deep people-sense. Many engineering problems in stuck companies are human problems wearing a technical costume, and you can tell the difference.

• Second: you can challenge a founder, an executive team, or a board and still be trusted afterward. Not because you avoid difficult conversations, but because you've earned credibility by doing the work. You prove points by shipping, not by deck.

Who This Is NOT For

If you've spent the last few years operating several layers away from the code, managing large organizations, and leading mostly through delegation, this probably isn't your role. We're looking for someone who can still go deep, make decisions firsthand, and demonstrate what good looks like when needed.

What You'll Do

• Embed into client organizations as interim CTO or VP Engineering and own the outcome, not just the advice.

• Own architecture decisions and their trade-offs, and be accountable when they meet reality.

• Hire, restructure, and mentor client engineering teams; build a culture of accountability that survives your departure.

• Make build/buy/kill decisions with real economic reasoning, and defend them to founders and boards.

• Ship code yourself when that's what moves things forward. This is situational hands-on leadership, not an IC role.

• Diagnose when a technical problem is actually an organizational, communication, or leadership problem.

• Drive AI-assisted engineering practices into teams that haven't adopted them yet.

• Have difficult conversations early, while the problems are still cheap enough to fix.

• Hand over a self-sufficient organization and move to the next engagement: we leave clients independent, not hooked.

What We Expect From You

• Deep software engineering fundamentals across the stack. You can go from a board conversation to a pull request in the same afternoon.

• Strong practical understanding of backend systems, data, databases, cloud infrastructure, and modern deployment practices. You don't need to be the deepest specialist in every area, but you should be comfortable reasoning about systems built with things like PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, Terraform, queues, APIs, and cloud services.

• Hands-on fluency with AI-assisted and agentic software development. You actively use AI-assisted and agentic development workflows and have strong, experience-based opinions about where they improve engineering performance and where they don't.

• Fluent English is a hard requirement, written and spoken.

• Willingness to travel occasionally for workshops and key client moments. We work remote-first, but some trust is built faster in person.

What Success Looks Like

• In the first weeks, you understand the real constraints, establish a plan, and build enough trust to start making decisions.

• Within months, engineering has clearer ownership, technical priorities match the needs of the business, and the team is shipping with greater pace and predictability.

• By the end of the engagement, the organization has the leadership, structure, and technical foundations to keep moving without you.

Why This Role Is Different

A traditional CTO/VP Engineering role gives you one company, one context, and one long arc. Here, you get the most challenging part of that job repeatedly: entering situations where technology and teams need to evolve, understanding what is really holding the company back, fixing it, and leaving it stronger than you found it.

You also won't be doing it alone. When an engagement needs more than leadership, you have SIROC's senior product, design, and engineering team behind you to help turn decisions into shipped outcomes.

Our Offer

• Fully remote position in a fully distributed team, based anywhere in the European Economic Area.

• Flexible schedule (you define when you want to work).

• A competitive salary based on your experience and impact.

• A brand new MacBook Pro (or equivalent) as your working laptop.