Strategy & Operations, Office of the CPTO

About the Role
You will work closely with the Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO) and take ownership of strategic initiatives, manage the operational rhythm of product and technology, and collaborate with leaders to translate decisions into actionable work. This new position suits someone with a robust technical foundation, operational instincts, and analytical rigor.

Role Overview
You will help build the Ask platform through collaborative squads comprising a Product Manager, engineers, a Technical Program Manager (TPgM), and a designer, each owning a portion of the product end-to-end. A forward-deployed team will work directly with the ministries and enterprises served. Your role involves ensuring that the entire organization remains aligned with the CPTO’s priorities.

The responsibilities are divided into three main areas:

• Initiatives you own end-to-end
• The cadence the organization operates on
• The day-to-day functions of the office
  Expect these responsibilities to shift frequently as the organization evolves alongside the product.

Your work will require preparation, credibility, and follow-through, necessitating a hands-on approach: writing memos, building models, and driving actions personally. This role is not merely about strategic planning; it involves real execution in a dynamic environment where swift adaptations are crucial.

Responsibilities
Strategic Initiatives

• Own multiple CPTO-sponsored initiatives simultaneously, from problem identification to achieving specific outcomes.
• Convert preliminary ideas into well-defined, decision-ready proposals: articulate the question, gather evidence, analyze options, weigh trade-offs, and provide recommendations.
• Transition approved proposals into execution: define plans, assign ownership, set milestones, and oversee until a permanent owner takes over.
• Conduct your technical research: prototype ideas, query data, script solutions, and present tangible work instead of presentations.
• Maintain an organized understanding of advancements in the field, including developments from frontier labs and open-source projects, to inform product strategy.

Operating Cadence

• Manage the operational rhythm for product and technology through regular leadership meetings, monthly business reviews, and quarterly annual planning sessions.
• Oversee the planning of cross-squad initiatives, determining customer deliverables and assessing squad contributions and outcomes.
• Handle agendas, pre-reads, and decision logs to ensure each forum concludes with assignments, ownership, and deadlines, tracking these to closure.
• Maintain a transparent record of decisions and their justifications in shared channels for learning and clarity among team members and AI agents.
• Provide metrics and insights for the CPTO and leaders regarding delivery, deployments, usage, agent quality, hiring, and spending.
• Contribute product and technology input to CEO and board reporting and identify risks, slippages, and conflicting priorities early, including potential solutions.
• Streamline processes by retiring ineffective meetings and reports and automating workflows using AI agents.

Working with the Leads

• Collaborate daily with the Heads of Product and BizOps, as well as leads from Engineering, Design, TPM, Deployments, and Commercial.
• Ensure alignment of priorities, plans, and commitments among teams, involving stakeholders in decision-making beforehand.
• Participate in critical customer and partner discussions alongside the CPTO, managing follow-up actions with commercial and deployment teams.

Office of the CPTO

• Prepare the CPTO for key meetings by providing contextual information, key positions of attendees, and necessary decisions.
• Document and track commitments from both internal and external meetings.
• Draft and refine leadership updates, all-hands meetings, board documents, and external presentations.
• Manage requests for the CPTO’s attention based on priorities and represent him in working sessions as needed.
• Assist in hiring management for key roles, ensuring alignment of candidates' strengths with organizational needs.
• Handle sensitive matters related to personnel, customers, and board issues with confidentiality.
• Take on special projects as they arise.

The Team
Approximately 100 individuals contribute to building Ask. You will report directly to the CPTO and interact regularly with the Heads of Product and BizOps, along with leads from Engineering, TPM, Deployments, and Commercial. The team is composed of professionals from top-tier product companies (DeepMind, Google, Amazon, Apple), startups, and strategy firms (e.g., McKinsey QuantumBlack and BCG X).

How We Work
We emphasize low ego and high agency. The best ideas prevail, and we foster an environment of humility, open questioning, and a willingness to revise our opinions based on new evidence. Team discussions and decisions occur in shared channels to maintain transparency and enable team and AI learning.

Who You Are
You possess 2 to 6 years of experience with a technical background: a degree in Computer Science or Engineering, or hands-on experience as a software, data, or machine learning engineer. You may have gained experience in strategy consulting, product or program management, a forward-deployed role, or operations at a scaling tech company.

• Proficiency in engaging with architecture-level discussions, including evaluations, latency, and cost considerations.
• Comfortable handling data analysis using SQL or Python, including the ability to interpret data independently.
• Experience working closely with senior executives and the ability to write clearly and concisely in English; proficiency in French and Arabic is a plus given the markets served.
• Prior work with enterprise, regulated, or public-sector buyers is preferred, as is experience across the Middle East or Africa, with a previous chief-of-staff role being advantageous.

Beyond experience, we seek candidates who exhibit the following qualities:

• Builder: Clear sense of ownership, demonstrating initiatives or projects that you initiated or completed successfully.
• Technical Instinct: Address unfamiliar problems directly, leveraging AI coding agents and understanding their capabilities.
• Operator: Complete tasks thoroughly and maintain accountability for actions and decisions.
• Judgement: Discern when to make decisions independently versus when to escalate or drop matters, identifying genuinely difficult situations.
• Spine: Stand firm in opinions while remaining adaptable to new insights or corrections, even in discussions with the CPTO.
• Clarity: Ability to connect complex ideas and clarify ambiguous problems into actionable strategies.
• Discretion: Handle sensitive information regarding personnel, customers, and board matters judiciously.

We recognize that many qualified candidates may not meet every requirement above. If you believe your unique skills could contribute value, we encourage you to apply.