Chief of Staff to the CTO

Altana•New York, NY

7d•$235,000 - $285,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Altana is hiring a Chief of Staff to the CTO to serve as an operational force multiplier for the CTO and the Product, Engineering, and Implementation leadership team. The role operates as an extension of the CTO, absorbing context across workstreams, making prioritization decisions, exercising delegated authority, and running the operating system of a technical organization serving commercial and government customers worldwide. It holds operational ownership for the Product/Engineering organization’s cadence, budget, and people planning in partnership with Finance and the People team, and builds and leads a Program Management Office of technical program managers responsible for cross-functional programs and customer deliveries. The position ensures the technical functions align with Altana’s business strategy and corporate governance. For compensation, leveling, organization design, and budget, it applies frameworks owned by the People CoE and Finance and serves as the CTO’s embedded counterpart to those functions. The position is based in Brooklyn, New York, with hybrid work flexibility. Candidates must live within commuting distance of Altana’s Williamsburg office. The posted annual base salary range is $235,000–$285,000. Competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full-time offers, and the company offers either a discretionary bonus or variable compensation plan depending on the role. Full-time employees are offered benefits including flexible time off; paid parental leave; medical, dental, and vision coverage; life, short- and long-term disability, and AD&D insurance; a 401(k) retirement savings program; commuter benefits; a Calm subscription; pet insurance options; an employee assistance program; and a Dependent Care FSA.

Requirements

Approximately 10 years of experience in product management, technical program or portfolio management, strategy, business operations, or a role involving genuine operational ownership.
Record of managing multiple parallel workstreams, competing stakeholders, and ambiguous ownership while keeping work moving.
Experience building or running a PMO or program portfolio, including designing intake, prioritization, and delivery-tracking processes adopted by teams.
Experience managing and growing a team; ideally program or project managers, including hiring, coaching, giving hard feedback, and building a function.
Technical fluency sufficient to discuss APIs, infrastructure, deployment, and architecture conceptually, read design documents, and challenge them; coding is not required.
Financial and operational fluency, including budget management, variance analysis, and headcount and spending trade-offs.
Comfort partnering with a People function on organization design and workforce planning, with enough fluency to serve as a thought partner without owning that function.
Ability to influence engineers, product managers, and go-to-market leaders through trust, framing, and timing rather than relying on the CTO’s authority.
Exceptional organizational precision, including creating legible systems, producing clean first drafts, and writing asynchronous updates that require minimal editing.
Must be within commuting distance of Altana’s Williamsburg office in Brooklyn, New York.

Nice To Haves

Experience delivering programs under government contracts, including milestones, deliverables, and compliance reporting.
Experience building production systems with LLMs, agents, evaluations, or retrieval.
Experience using engineering metrics such as DORA or SPACE to improve team practices.
Background in trade, supply chain, or compliance, or experience working with government customers.

Responsibilities

Lead or staff high-priority organizational initiatives identified by Product, Engineering, and Design leadership.
Run the operating cadence, including staff meetings, roadmap planning and portfolio reviews, metrics reviews, and leadership offsites; set agendas, drive follow-through, and document and distribute decisions.
Build and lead a team of technical program managers; hire and develop the team, set standards for the function, and determine where TPMs are embedded versus centrally deployed.
Own the portfolio view of active programs and customer deliveries, intake and prioritization, and delivery standards, including planning, status, risk and dependency tracking, launch readiness, and government contract reporting; provide tooling to make delivery health visible.
Integrate work across Product, Engineering, Implementation, and public- and private-sector delivery teams; identify conflicts in priorities and drive resolution.
Manage information and decision flow to the CTO, determining what reaches the CTO, in what form, and what is escalated versus resolved below.
Prepare board and all-hands materials and internal Product/Engineering updates grounded in the organization’s actual state.
Partner with the People CoE on Product/Engineering headcount planning, organization design, and leveling and compensation within central frameworks; assess where the organization is over- or under-built and act as the CTO’s single counterpart to the People team.
Own the Product/Engineering budget and spending against Finance’s plan; track burn, flag variance, model headcount and vendor trade-offs, and serve as the CTO’s counterpart to FP&A.
Own success metrics in partnership with FP&A to align business levers with growth and capital deployment.

Benefits

Flexible Time Off (FTO).
Paid parental leave: 14 weeks for non-birthing, adoptive, and foster parents and up to 26 weeks for birthing parents, paid at 100% of base salary.
Medical, vision, and dental benefits with employer contributions; the high-deductible health plan is fully employer-paid for employees, with an employer HSA contribution and an FSA option.
Life, short- and long-term disability, and AD&D insurance at no cost to employees.
Fidelity 401(k) retirement savings program.
Pre-tax commuter benefits for public transit or parking.
Free premium Calm subscription.
Pet insurance and/or a Total Pet veterinary service and telehealth discount plan.
Free access to a confidential Employee Assistance Program.
Dependent Care FSA.
Competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full-time offers.
Depending on the role, a discretionary bonus or variable compensation plan.