Chief Technology Officer

Chief Technology Officer

Health, Fitness and Wellbeing Venture Portfolio

Manchester / North West \| Hybrid / Flexible (Expected 1 day a week onsite)

£100,000 to £130,000 \+ potential equity

Build the technology capability behind a growing portfolio of businesses

We are exclusively supporting an ambitious venture-building organisation operating across health, fitness, wellbeing and sport with the appointment of a hands-on Chief Technology Officer.

The organisation works alongside founders and established operators to create, validate, build and scale technology-enabled businesses. Its model combines venture creation, product development, technology delivery, commercial expertise and access to an influential sector network.

This is a portfolio-level technology leadership position rather than a conventional CTO role within a single established business.

The successful person will help assess new business concepts, define technical strategy, establish engineering standards, oversee delivery and support the development of multiple products and ventures at different stages of maturity.

The opportunity

You will provide technology leadership across a varied portfolio of early-stage ventures, growing digital products and consultancy-led transformation projects.

One day you may be assessing the technical feasibility of a new proposition with a founder. The next, you could be reviewing the architecture of a growing SaaS platform, helping to recruit an engineering team or advising an established operator on a complex technology challenge.

You will create the technical frameworks, standards and capabilities that allow the organisation to build and scale high-quality products repeatedly.

This role requires someone who can operate credibly with founders, investors, boards and commercial leaders while remaining sufficiently close to architecture, engineering and delivery to provide meaningful technical direction.

Key responsibilities

• Define and lead technology strategy across a portfolio of ventures and client engagements.
• Create a repeatable technical framework for validating, building and scaling new products.
• Assess the technical feasibility, risk and scalability of new business concepts.
• Translate commercial propositions into credible product and technology roadmaps.
• Provide architecture leadership across cloud, web, mobile, data, integration and AI-enabled products.
• Establish shared engineering standards, tooling, development practices and delivery governance.
• Review platform quality, security, performance, scalability and maintainability.
• Conduct technical due diligence on potential ventures, partnerships and investments.
• Support founders and leadership teams with build, buy and partner decisions.
• Recruit, assess, mentor and develop technical leaders and engineering teams.
• Create an engineering community that shares knowledge, tools and best practice across the portfolio.
• Oversee relationships with technology vendors, development partners and specialist consultancies.
• Support technical discovery and solution design for established organisations.
• Provide practical, hands-on technical leadership where a venture or project requires additional support.
• Advise senior stakeholders on technical risk, opportunity, resourcing and investment requirements.

About you

You are likely to be an experienced CTO, VP of Engineering, Engineering Director, Technical Director or Head of Engineering who has operated across multiple products, ventures, clients or business units.

You will bring:

• A strong software engineering and product-development background.
• Experience designing and scaling modern cloud-based platforms.
• The ability to move confidently between strategy, architecture and practical delivery.
• Experience holding responsibility for more than one product, business or client engagement.
• Strong knowledge of cloud architecture, APIs, data, DevOps, security and software delivery.
• Experience recruiting, mentoring and developing high-performing engineering teams.
• Commercial judgement and a pragmatic approach to technology decision-making.
• Experience working directly with founders, boards, investors or senior operational leaders.
• The ability to communicate complex technical decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience assessing technical debt, engineering quality and platform scalability.
• Confidence operating within ambiguity and creating structure around early-stage ideas.
• The credibility to challenge technical decisions while building trusted relationships.

Relevant backgrounds may include

• Venture studios or venture builders.
• Digital product and technology consultancies.
• Multi-product SaaS organisations.
• Investor-backed portfolio environments.
• Private equity technology or value-creation teams.
• Health technology, fitness technology, wellbeing or sports technology.
• Consumer marketplaces, subscriptions and membership platforms.
• Mobile-first consumer products.
• Businesses combining physical locations with digital customer journeys.

Previous experience within health, fitness or wellbeing would be advantageous, but portfolio breadth, commercial judgement and technical depth are more important than direct sector experience.

Technology environment

The precise environment varies across the portfolio, but current and anticipated technologies include:

• TypeScript and Node.js.
• React and React Native.
• AWS.
• Containerised and serverless architecture.
• ECS, Lambda, RDS and ElastiCache.
• AWS CDK and infrastructure as code.
• APIs and complex third-party integrations.
• Mobile applications and app-store delivery.
• CI/CD, observability and automated testing.
• Cloud security and data protection.
• AI-assisted product and engineering workflows.

Candidates do not need to be specialists in every technology listed. They must, however, retain sufficient technical depth to assess architecture, challenge engineering decisions and guide delivery teams effectively.

Why consider this opportunity?

• Shape technology across multiple businesses rather than inheriting one established platform.
• Work with founders from early validation through to product scale.
• Build an engineering capability and technical operating model from an early stage.
• Influence venture selection, technical investment and product direction.
• Operate within the growing health, fitness, wellbeing and sport economy.
• Work alongside experienced founders, operators, investors and sector specialists.
• Potentially participate in the long-term value created through equity.

This appointment is being managed on a confidential basis by Recann.