Chief Product & Technology Officer

Banyan Software

6d•$185,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

ZAP Solutions is seeking a Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO) to lead its platform modernization and AI-enabled workflow initiatives. The CPTO will unify product direction and technology execution, bring structure to the engineering team, and establish an AI-first operating rhythm. This role reports directly to the CEO and is a core member of the leadership team, responsible for setting product direction, owning the technical foundation, shaping culture, and driving transformation. The company aims to evolve its durable market position into a modern, scalable SaaS platform, doubling its customer base without doubling the codebase. Key focus areas include platform reliability, data as an asset, and leveraging AI for competitive advantage.

Requirements

Proven SaaS leader who unifies product vision and technology execution under a single accountable seat.
Comfortable leading through modernization and platform inflection.
Holds deep product thinking and technical delivery in equal measure.
Leads with an AI-first methodology.
Energized by transformation rather than threatened by it.
Close enough to the product and code to stay personally connected.
Mature enough to modernize a legacy platform without disrupting customers and long-tenured teams.
Led a technology and product transformation in tandem, with specific delivery and adoption outcomes, and brought the team through the change rather than around it.
Shipped AI-embedded product capabilities with measurable outcomes, or led sustained AI experimentation with clear conviction about where it creates durable value.
Personal, daily agentic AI use.
Owned product direction as the synthesis of customer signals, usage data, and market insights, and can point to a roadmap they moved from customer-reactive to market-facing.
Owned a SaaS platform's security posture and compliance requirements (SOC 2, industry-specific standards) personally, not through a delegated security team.
Designed or redesigned a data architecture that serves analytics, BI, and AI as a unified asset.
Built and scaled an engineering team, including hiring, developing engineers into leaders, and managing performance directly.
Addressed underperformance directly, not through HR.
Made architecture and product investment decisions with direct commercial rationale tied to retention, revenue, or competitive moat, and can make an investment case a CFO would accept.
Ran product discovery personally: customer conversations, spec creation, prioritization frameworks.
Comfortable holding the product credibility of the company in enterprise sales cycles.

Nice To Haves

Experience in EdTech, higher education technology, admissions or enrollment management, CRM ecosystems, or comparable vertical SaaS with heavy customization patterns.
Familiarity with centralized application services (AMCAS, CASPA, PharmCAS) or SIS/CRM integrations common in higher education.
Background operating in an AWS-primary infrastructure environment with regulated data (FERPA or comparable).
Track record consolidating a multi-codebase or heavily forked platform into a maintainable SaaS product without breaking client trust.

Responsibilities

Own product direction as the synthesis of customer signals, usage data, and market insights, moving the roadmap from customer-reactive to market-facing.
Run product discovery personally: focus groups, customer advisory councils, spec creation, and validation, particularly during year one while a product function is being built.
Establish formal prioritization, roadmap, and release planning practices, communicated internally and to customers.
Partner closely with the VP of Client Success to build a product operating model that plays to both strengths.
Lend the product voice to enterprise sales cycles and Customer Success partnership.
Define and execute the technical vision for the AMP platform and companion products (CRM, SAMS, Schedule Today), ensuring the platform is scalable, secure, and built for the next phase of growth.
Drive consolidation of the multi-codebase legacy footprint toward a modern, maintainable SaaS architecture that preserves ZAP's reputation for client responsiveness while lifting the cost of customization.
Design a data architecture that serves analytics, BI, and AI as a unified estate, positioning ZAP for AI capabilities generic models cannot replicate on applicant and enrollment data.
Lead adoption of AI-assisted development practices across the engineering team, moving from ad hoc use of tools like Claude Code and Cursor to a systematic capability that improves throughput.
Own security, compliance, and data privacy practices appropriate for a higher education SaaS environment, including FERPA, PCI-DSS, and WCAG/Section 508 accessibility standards.
Manage technical debt pragmatically, balancing remediation with forward momentum on the roadmap.
Build and lead a high-performing engineering team of 10 to 15, identifying and developing internal team leads, and creating the first formal management layer this organization has had.
Establish engineering and product-ops practices that scale without bureaucracy, moving the team from reactive work assignment to a proactive roadmap.
Calibrate change to team tenure and mission-criticality, ensuring the transformation brings long-tenured developers along.
Invest in reskilling the team for AI-native ways of working.
Address underperformance directly and quickly, without waiting for HR.
Serve as the CEO's primary product and technology partner on business direction, market positioning, and investment decisions.
Identify where AI and platform capabilities can reshape market position and create durable competitive advantage.
Represent the product and technology vision with conviction in executive, customer, and board conversations.
Push back constructively on decisions that trade short-term velocity for long-term product or platform health.