Chief Technology Officer

Who are we? Airportr is re-architecting the way baggage moves through the world. We’re building the digital rails for baggage, transforming a legacy, manual process into a seamless, data-driven network that connects passengers, airlines, airports, and logistics partners in real time. Headquartered in London, we partner with some of the world’s leading airlines to deliver Baggage-as-a-Service, fully integrated into their booking and check-in journeys. Our platform is live across multiple European markets and expanding rapidly through strategic global partnerships that enable deployment across hundreds of airports and carriers. Airportr sits at the intersection of travel technology, logistics, and automation — combining deep operational know-how with modern engineering to solve one of air travel’s hardest problems at global scale. We’re on a mission to make baggage handling invisible: intelligent, automated, and effortlessly connected from doorstep to destination. You will define the technology, data and AI foundations that make this vision a global reality. What are we looking for?  The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) holds a critical leadership position at Airportr. This role involves defining and executing the company's technology vision, strategy, and roadmap. As a vital member of the executive team, the CTO is directly responsible for ensuring the core platform's security, stability and its contribution to market leadership and global expansion. This pivotal role requires a proven and accomplished leader with a track record of successfully scaling technology infrastructure and building high-performing teams.  You will lead our evolution from surface-level, bolt-on AI features to a deeply integrated AI-native platform—where data, models, and decisioning are embedded across the customer journey, logistics orchestration, and operational tooling to drive measurable step-changes in performance. This experience should ideally have been gained in a fast-paced, high-growth environment, with a preference for candidates from the travel or logistics technology sectors. The CTO will be instrumental in fostering innovation, managing technological risks, and aligning technology initiatives with the company's broader business objectives to maintain competitiveness in a rapidly evolving market. Key Responsibilities Define the Scalable Architecture: Architect and continuously evolve a highly scalable, available, and secure platform capable of handling exponential transaction growth, complex logistics orchestration, and new global market entry. Identify and integrate emerging technologies to drive product innovation and a distinct competitive advantage in the travel technology ecosystem. Lead our shift from surface‑level AI features to deeply integrated, AI‑native capabilities across the platform. Embed intelligence into routing, demand forecasting, bag tracking, customer communication, and partner integrations—turning data into real‑time, adaptive decision systems that drive measurable operational and customer impact. Own the entire security and compliance posture of the platform, ensuring continuous adherence to stringent global aviation regulations and data privacy laws. Implement guardrails for safety, bias, auditability, and data governance aligned with aviation and privacy regulations, with clear human-in-the-loop controls for critical operations. End-to-End Platform Ownership: Oversee the full technical lifecycle of our core products: the customer e-commerce/mobile experience, the proprietary agent-facing logistics and regulatory compliant workflow apps, the real-time bag tracking system, and mission-critical airline/airport integration APIs. Own the Data Platform: Lead the design and operation of Airportr’s data infrastructure ensuring reliable, governed data flows that power analytics, AI, and automation across the business. Automation & Velocity: Embed automation at every layer—from infrastructure provisioning and CI/CD pipelines to testing, data workflows, and operational recovery—to enable rapid, safe, repeatable delivery. Ensure quality and resilience through DevOps principles and a bias for systems that run themselves. Executive Strategy: As a member of the C-suite, translate business objectives and investor expectations into clear, actionable technical strategies and investment plans, effectively communicating the technology vision to the Board and external stakeholders. Team Scaling & Culture: Lead, mentor, and rapidly scale a high-performing engineering, data, and IT team. Cultivate a culture of technical excellence, accountability, speed, and continuous learning, while attracting top-tier talent in a competitive market. Budget & Resource Management: Manage the technology budget, making strategic trade-offs between innovation, operational maintenance, and cost optimisation to maximise runway and investment return. How we will measure impact Success will be evaluated based on the technology platform's strength, speed, and efficiency, specifically its capacity to scale securely and reliably. This will enable rapid innovation and demonstrable business results. The impact will be evident in quicker time-to-market, enhanced engineering velocity, and consistently high platform performance in terms of availability, latency, and stability. The platform must deliver a high ROI on engineering investment and healthy margins through automation, scaling efficiently across markets with robust security, compliance and cost discipline. Airportr's distinct technological advantages, including its integrations, data intelligence and automation, will serve as a competitive differentiator, guaranteeing resilience, scalability, and sustained market leadership. What will we need from you? Proven experience in a senior technology leadership role, ideally as a CTO or VP/Director of Engineering, having directly managed and scaled a technology platform in a Series A/B+ startup or scale-up business. Significant experience in the Travel Technology, Logistics Tech or Supply Chain sectors, with a deep understanding of the unique challenges of real-time, physical-world orchestration (e.g., route optimisation, mobile operations, physical asset tracking). Expertise in designing and managing complex, highly available, and secure systems in a Cloud environment, with a focus on microservices and API-first architecture for enterprise integration. Demonstrated ability to navigate complex regulatory and compliance landscapes and build technology processes to meet these requirements. A natural leader with exceptional skills in team development, cross-functional collaboration and communication with all stakeholders. Strong strategic and business acumen, with a track record of driving business outcomes through technology innovation and efficient resource allocation.