Head of Technology

WorkForge•Kansas City, MO

About The Position

WorkForge is a growing organization focused on training and developing frontline workers in the food manufacturing industry. Our solution serves frontline workers, operators, maintenance technicians, and sanitation teams at food production facilities across the country, delivering compliance-driven and skills-based training through a purpose-built learning management system (LMS) and robust content development. We are preparing to make a significant investment in our technology and content to capture a clear market opportunity. We are looking for a senior technology leader to help us build the foundation for scalable, sustainable growth. You will define and execute the technology strategy for our learning management platform, evaluating our current architecture, and standing up a scalable SaaS platform that serves enterprise food manufacturers. You need to be comfortable operating independently, managing third-party development and design resources, and working directly with customers and prospects to understand what the platform needs to do – from both a near and long-term perspective. A major part of this role is owning the product requirements document (PRD) that defines the platform. Until we hire a dedicated product leader, you will be the person gathering voice-of-customer insights from our sales and customer success teams, translating those into technical specs, and making tradeoff decisions about what gets built and when. You will also be responsible for identifying technologies that help us create and produce learning content more efficiently — better, faster, and at lower cost. This role is designed to grow with the organization, with the opportunity to evolve into a broader technology leadership position that builds and leads an internal team as the company scales.

Requirements

7+ years in software engineering and technology leadership, with a strong hands-on foundation in modern SaaS architecture, cloud infrastructure, and application development
You have stood up a SaaS platform before, from early stage through production, and understand what it takes to design, build, deploy, and scale
Track record of managing third-party development agencies, design firms, and contract engineering resources to deliver quality software on time
Strong UI/UX sensibility and experience overseeing the design of web and mobile applications; you do not need to be a designer, but you need to know what good looks like and how to get there
Experience leveraging technology to accelerate product design and production, content authoring tools, automation, AI-assisted workflows
Solid understanding of product management fundamentals: requirements gathering, PRD development, roadmap planning, stakeholder management
Enterprise SaaS experience: multi-tenancy, SSO/SAML, APIs, compliance and audit capabilities
Comfortable operating independently and making decisions without a lot of organizational scaffolding around you
Can communicate clearly with business stakeholders and present to investors without reverting to jargon
Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. We are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience designing and building an LMS or edtech platform, content distribution, authoring, assessment, learning analytics
Experience working with third-party design and UX firms to create intuitive interfaces for non-technical users
Familiarity with food manufacturing, industrial environments, or regulated industries and the training needs of frontline workers
Experience building mobile-first applications for users with limited connectivity and varying digital literacy
Background transitioning a company off a licensed or white-label platform to a proprietary or hybrid stack
Familiarity with Ed-tech standards (LTI, xAPI/Tin Can, SCORM) and learning analytics frameworks

Responsibilities

Own the PRD. This means working directly with sales, customer success, and customers to gather feedback on what the platform needs to do today and where the market is heading
Translate those inputs into technical specifications with clear scoping and sequencing
Architect a SaaS platform that can support enterprise requirements: multi-tenancy, SSO/SAML, API integrations, compliance reporting, and mobile-first delivery for plant floor workers
Get out of the building, participate in customer discovery, plant floor visits, and prospect conversations to understand how frontline workers interact with training
Stand up the infrastructure, hosting environment, deployment pipelines, and security protocols to run a production platform
Partner with Product and Implementation teams on the integration of learner assessment technologies (hardware, software, and analytics) within the LMS
Partner with Product and Development teams to find and implement tools that make content creation faster and at lower cost, authoring platforms, media management, automation, and AI-assisted workflows
Work with our instructional design and content teams to make sure the platform supports the formats frontline learners use short-form video, mobile micro-learning, multilingual content
Operate as a technologist and evangelize emerging technologies (AI content generation, interactive simulations, adaptive learning) and figure out what is practical to adopt and what is hype
Source, evaluate, and manage third-party development agencies, design firms, and contract engineers
Set up development processes, sprint cadences, code review, QA, that work for a small, fast-moving organization
Figure out the right development model over time. We may stay outsourced, go hybrid, or eventually build an in-house team. That decision will evolve as the business does, and you will drive it
Serve as the primary technical and product voice until we bring on a dedicated product manager
Advise business leadership and investors on technology investments, build-vs-buy tradeoffs, and where to place bets
Manage backlog prioritization, technical debt, and release planning
Establish security policies and data governance practices appropriate for enterprise customers in a regulated industry