Chief Technology Officer

We are looking for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to combine hands-on engineering with executive leadership, scaling our geospatial environmental insights from custom delivery to repeatable products. COMPANY Space4Good is a social enterprise using satellite data, geospatial analysis and artificial intelligence to support nature conservation and regeneration. We help organisations understand environmental change and turn complex data into practical decisions for forests, agriculture and nature finance. We are building on years of project delivery to develop repeatable products and services. With investor support and an experienced team of engineers and environmental specialists, we are looking for a CTO who has helped an early-stage product business find its footing and knows how to turn ambition into progress. ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES This newly created CTO role brings together technical leadership, product development and organisational responsibilities to support Space4Good’s next stage. You will work directly with the CEO as a strategic sparring partner, shaping company direction, challenging assumptions and translating priorities into action. You will own technical strategy and lead the technical teams to improve how we build, learn and deliver. The immediate focus is finding product-market fit and improving efficiency and reliability while continuing to serve our existing clients. This is a hands-on leadership role with room to shape both the technology and the organisation. What you’ll do: - Shape our direction: Help the CEO and directors set clear priorities, measurable goals and practical milestones. Bring commercial judgement to decisions about where we invest time, what we build and which opportunities we pursue. - Own the technical roadmap and architecture: Connect customer needs to platform and data-pipeline decisions. Decide what we build once and reuse, what remains project-specific, and when to build or buy. - Make good engineering practice stick: Embed code review, testing, standards, reproducibility, documentation and reliable deployment into daily work. Establish clear ownership of shared assets, reduce dependence on individuals and protect time for improvements when delivery pressure rises. - Shape commitments before they are made: Work with our teams on scope, estimates, capacity and technical feasibility. Agree quality checks with our specialists so we can deliver what we promise at a viable cost. - Turn customer learning into working products: Partner with our product director to test assumptions, build prototypes on real data and iterate with users. Help the team move quickly from an idea to evidence, and from validated demand to repeatable delivery. - Stay hands-on: Spend roughly half your week coding, reviewing, prototyping and solving problems alongside the team, including practical project work where useful. Balance this with protected time for leadership and technical direction. - Lead and develop the technical team: Take responsibility for line management, feedback, development plans, hiring and onboarding. Coach people through changes in how we work, delegate clearly and help the team deliver with confidence and a sustainable workload. - Connect technology and business: Explain our capabilities and limitations to clients, partners and funders when technical input matters. Work with the colleagues responsible for sales, project delivery and scientific validation to turn technical progress into customer value. WHO YOU ARE - You have led technology in an early-stage product business and can show how you helped move from customer experiments and pilots towards repeatable, commercially viable delivery. - You have managed and developed a technical team, with responsibility for priorities, feedback and performance. You know how to support specialists while holding people accountable. - You have strong data engineering fundamentals and have owned a data platform or processing pipeline end to end, including cloud architecture, reliability and running costs. - You write strong Python and remain comfortable building, debugging and reviewing production code. - You have improved engineering habits in a busy team and know how to bring people with you when changing established ways of working. - You know when a quick experiment is enough, when to invest in production quality and when to stop building. - You can weigh technical choices against customer value, delivery cost and limited startup resources. - You are comfortable challenging the CEO and team constructively, making decisions with incomplete information and turning broad goals into clear next steps. - You care about social and environmental impact. - You communicate clearly in English and collaborate well across disciplines. You are available 4-5 days per week and ideally work regularly with our international team at our office in The Hague. NICE TO HAVE EXPERIENCE - Remote sensing, earth observation, GIS or environmental data - Applied machine learning, satellite imagery, LiDAR or radar - Earth Engine or geospatial workloads at scale - Forestry, regenerative agriculture, nature finance, MRV or carbon markets - Experience in both consultancy and product businesses, particularly helping a team in their transition - Dutch work permit and language skills are a plus WHAT WE OFFER A central leadership role in a mission-driven company, with the opportunity to shape strategy and see your work used in real environmental decisions. You will work alongside a multidisciplinary team with substantial domain expertise and have room to build the shared foundations that help everyone do better work. We offer a competitive salary, pension and additional benefits incl. share options. JOIN US! We are excited to get to know you. Please fill out our application in the link.