$32M ARR | Bootstrapped | Agentic Marketing Pioneer

Location: San Francisco, CA (hybrid or fully remote for the right candidate.)
Reports to: CEO (Manick Bhan, Founder)

The Opportunity: Scale 3x Without 3x Cost

Search Atlas bootstrapped to $32M ARR without venture funding. Now we're pioneering agentic marketing - AI systems that don't just analyze, they act autonomously for marketers at scale.

We're hiring a deeply technical CTO to own our platform architecture and scale it to $100M+ ARR. You'll work side-by-side with our Founder (current CTO) for 6-12 months, then become the technical voice of the company.

This is not a turnaround. It's a "make bulletproof what's working" challenge.

Your Technical Reality

You'll inherit and evolve a mature, battle-tested platform:

Backend: Python 3, Django REST Framework, Celery.
Databases: PostgreSQL (transactional), ClickHouse (analytics), Elasticsearch.
Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker, microservices.
Frontend: Next.js, React, TypeScript, MobX.
Observability: Sentry, Datadog, Grafana.
AI/ML: LLMs in production, agentic systems architecture.

Scale Context: Terabytes of search data, sub-100ms latency, 99.99% uptime for Fortune 500s.

What You'll Drive

Platform Architecture

Scale crawling infrastructure from millions to 10x volume without proportional cost increase.
Productionize AI agents for autonomous marketing actions at enterprise-grade reliability.
Build resilient data pipelines that never lose a crawl or corrupt indexes.
Evolve observability from reactive monitoring to predictive reliability.

Engineering Excellence

Grow engineering from 100+ to 150+ while maintaining velocity and code quality.
Mentor Principal Engineers and Tech Leads on architecture decisions.
Instill ownership culture where engineers own features end-to-end.

Technical Innovation

Drive agentic AI roadmap: systems that reason, act, and learn autonomously.
Evaluate emerging tech: vector databases, LLM architectures, edge computing.
Make hard calls on prioritization between features, platform, and technical debt.

Who You Are

10+ years software engineering, 5+ years senior tech leadership (VP/CTO).
Proven track record scaling SaaS: $20M to $100M+ ARR (you've done this before).
Hands-on technical depth: Can review Python/Django, optimize PostgreSQL, architect distributed systems.
AI/ML fluency: LLMs and agentic systems in production, not just prototypes.
Capital-efficient mindset: Bootstrapped or capital-efficient environment experience.
Team leadership: Led 100+ engineers in high-output environments with <15% attrition.

Bonus: MarTech/SEO domain knowledge, search infrastructure experience, remote-first team leadership.

Compensation

Base: $200K–$500K+ USD annually.
Equity: Meaningful package in profitable, bootstrapped company.
Benefits: Health, dental, vision, unlimited PTO, parental leave, development budget.

The Transition

6-12 months side-by-side with founder/CEO Manick Bhan for deep knowledge transfer on AI/ML systems, SEO domain expertise, and enterprise relationships. You become the technical voice; he remains CEO.

Recruitment Process

Step 1: Initial Screening Call with the Executive Recruitment Team.

Step 2: Technical Assessment.

Step 3: Technical Vision & Transition conversation with Manick Bhan (CEO & Founder).

Step 4: Cultural & Strategic Fit meeting with Sophia Deluz-Bhan (COO) and Mandi Odom (People Director).

Step 5: Final Partnership Interview with Manick to align on mutual terms (Optional).

Step 6: Offer Extension.

$32M ARR. Bootstrapped. Category-defining.

Search Atlas Group is an equal opportunity employer.

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