Chief Technology & Product Officer (CTPO)

About the Role

The Chief Technology & Product Officer (CTPO) is a dual-mandate executive role at MSM Unify, responsible for the convergence of technology strategy and product excellence across the entire platform and business portfolio. Reporting directly to the CEO, the CTPO translates business ambition into reliable platforms, innovative products, and AI-enabled operations that serve clients, internal teams, and commercial partners across Canada.

This is a builder's role. MSM Unify is scaling rapidly and the CTPO will be expected to architect the infrastructure, products, and team culture to match that pace without compromising platform performance or business continuity.

Why This Role Exists

MSM Unify is growing in commercial volume, geographic reach, and operational complexity. Technology decisions made in the next 12–24 months will determine whether the business can scale with quality or be constrained by fragmented systems. The CTPO is being created to:

• Unify product and platform strategy across five institutions
• Establish AI adoption as a competitive advantage, not a pilot project
• Ensure engineering execution keeps pace with institutional growth
• Protect platform reliability as student and regulatory data complexity increases
• Own the product roadmap that supports admissions, compliance, student services, and workforce operations

Key Result Areas (KRAs)

1. Product Roadmap Ownership

• Define, maintain, and communicate a 12–24 month product roadmap aligned to institutional priorities and regulatory requirements
• Lead product discovery cycles — translating staff pain points and student experience gaps into defined features and releases
• Establish prioritization frameworks that balance speed-to-market, compliance obligations, and platform stability
• Own the product release calendar and executive reporting on roadmap health

2. Platform Stability & Engineering Execution

• Architect and oversee multi-institution platform infrastructure with a target uptime SLA of 99.5% or higher
• Lead engineering sprints, code quality standards, deployment pipelines, and QA practices
• Implement incident response protocols and post-mortem culture
• Establish monitoring, alerting, and disaster recovery practices for all critical student-facing and administrative systems

3. AI Enablement & Automation

• Design and execute a portfolio-wide AI adoption roadmap, from workflow automation to intelligent tutoring and regulatory document processing
• Evaluate, pilot, and scale AI tools across admissions, compliance, student services, and marketing functions
• Build internal AI literacy — training staff and identifying AI champions across campuses
• Govern AI usage ethically, in compliance with applicable provincial and federal regulations

4. Product Adoption & User Experience

• Own adoption metrics for all internal and student-facing products — tracking onboarding rates, active usage, and satisfaction
• Partner with Student Services, Academic Directors, and Compliance to understand user needs and remove adoption friction
• Lead change management programs for new technology rollouts across campuses.

5. Timely Product Delivery

• Establish sprint planning, retrospectives, and agile delivery practices across the engineering team
• Manage vendor and offshore development teams (Philippines / India) against agreed delivery standards
• Report on delivery cadence and milestone achievement to CEO monthly

Required Qualifications Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline (required)
• MBA or graduate-level business credential is a strong asset
• Formal training or certification in product management (e.g., Pragmatic Institute, AIPMM, CSPO) is an asset.

Experience Required

• 10+ years in technology leadership, with at least 5 years at the C-suite or VP level.
• Demonstrated ownership of a full product lifecycle — from concept through scale — in an environment with regulatory or compliance complexity.
• Experience managing multi-product or multi-brand technology portfolios.
• Hands-on track record implementing AI or automation tools in operational settings (not just advisory).
• Experience managing hybrid teams including offshore/nearshore developers
• EdTech or regulated-sector (healthcare, financial services, education) experience is a significant asset

Technical Competencies

• Cloud platform architecture (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• SaaS product development and API integration
• AI/ML tooling — LLMs, automation frameworks, intelligent workflow design
• Data architecture, reporting pipelines, and student information system (SIS) environments
• DevOps practices — CI/CD, containerization, infrastructure-as-code
• Cybersecurity fundamentals relevant to student and institutional data

Leadership Competencies

• Translates ambiguity into executable roadmaps — comfortable operating where process doesn't yet exist
• Communicates complex technical strategy to non-technical executives and regulators.
• Builds engineering culture — hiring, mentoring, and retaining high-performing technical talent.
• Manages competing priorities across multiple institutional stakeholders without losing delivery focus.
• Operates with urgency and commercial awareness — understands that product delays have direct revenue and compliance consequences.