Chief of Staff to the CTO

Role:

Northwood is looking for a Chief of Staff to the CTO to help scale the impact of Northwood’s engineering leadership by translating technical expertise into execution across the company. In this role, you’ll act as the CTO’s force multiplier – owning the operational, coordination, and execution work required to keep complex product and engineering efforts moving forward. You’ll work closely with the CTO, engineering Heads, and business development teams to translate strategy into clear plans, track progress, and ensure teams stay aligned as Northwood scales. This is a highly trusted, hands-on role at the intersection of technical leadership, execution, and organizational clarity.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as a strategic thought partner to the CTO, pressure-testing priorities and shaping technical direction
• Drive complex, cross-functional initiatives to completion, ensuring clear ownership, sequencing, and outcomes
• Act as an extension of the CTO in key forums, aligning teams and reinforcing engineering priorities across the company
• Partner with engineering leadership to define and continuously rebalance resource allocation across product and technical priorities
• Maintain clear ownership models and execution visibility across major engineering initiative
• Design and run lightweight operating rhythms (planning reviews, roadmap syncs, weekly execution checkpoints)
• Synthesize progress, risks, and dependencies into concise updates for leadership
• Ensure alignment across engineering, product, and BD through structured, consistent communication
• Support the development and maintenance of long-term technical and product roadmaps
• Help manage the process of aligning engineering execution with business and customer priorities
• Surface tradeoffs and constraints to support executive decision-making

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline
• 5+ years of experience in technical program management, engineering, product operations, or similar roles
• Experience coordinating complex work across multiple engineering teams
• Strong organizational skills and comfort operating with ambiguity

Preferred Experience:

• Experience operating as an information hub for senior technical leadership
• Excellent systems thinking and the ability to reason about dependencies and tradeoffs
• High judgment, discretion, and ability to operate in a trusted leadership role
• Ability to drive clarity, alignment, and momentum without formal authority
• Bias toward action and ownership – seeing gaps and filling them

Additional Information:

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.