Chief Technology Officer

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Chief Technology Officer
Remote / Hybrid
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About Nishan
Nishan's mission is to make original scientific research accessible to students regardless of institutional privilege. We build the infrastructure (peer-reviewed publication, research tooling, outreach, computational resources, and academic community) that lets pre-professional students across every STEM discipline become producers of knowledge rather than passive consumers of it. Our team is a growing group of researchers, educators, students, and operators who believe that the distribution of scientific talent is far wider than the distribution of scientific opportunity, and that this gap is an engineering problem we can solve.
About The Role
We describe the gap between scientific talent and scientific opportunity as an engineering problem. The Chief Technology Officer is the person who has to make that literally true. Everything we promise students, a place to publish their work, tools to do real research, and a library that actually teaches, reaches them through software or it does not reach them at all.
This is not a ceremonial role. As Chief Technology Officer, you own the technical platform end to end. You will own the research and publishing application, the AI research tooling, and the infrastructure the library and journal run on. You will make the architecture decisions, set the engineering standards, and lead the people who build. And you will be the person who says something is not ready to ship when it is not secure or not reliable, because a platform that loses a student's work or exposes their data does more harm than a slower one that holds.
If you are more interested in chasing the newest framework than in building systems students can depend on, this is not the right role, and we would rather tell you that now.
Key responsibilities
Own the technical platform end to end, including the research and publishing application, the AI research tooling, and the infrastructure the library and journal run on
Set the architecture and make the build-versus-buy and technology decisions the organization has to live with
Own reliability, security, and the handling of student data and student work, and treat each as non-negotiable
Set and enforce engineering standards, from code review to deployment, so the platform stays maintainable as it grows
Lead and mentor a distributed group of engineers and technical contributors
Direct how we build and deploy AI and computational tools, including where they are trustworthy and where they are not
Turn product and program needs into scoped, staffed, and shippable technical plans
You may be a good fit if you
Have built and shipped software that real users depend on, and take more satisfaction in systems that hold than in ones that demo well
Have made architecture decisions and lived with their consequences
Understand security and data handling deeply enough to protect information that belongs to minors
Have led or mentored engineers, and can raise a team's standard rather than only writing the hardest code yourself
Can explain technical tradeoffs to non-engineers without condescension and without hiding the real cost
Believe that shipping quickly and building secure, reliable systems are compatible goals, and are prepared to do the hard work of holding both
Strong candidates may also have
xperience with our stack or its equivalents, including Next.js, Supabase, hosting like Vercel, and modern LLM tooling
Experience building a platform from an early stage, when there is no existing system to inherit
Familiarity with the requirements of handling data for minors, including COPPA or comparable frameworks
A working understanding of where AI accelerates engineering and where it introduces risk
Prior involvement in STEM, research tooling, or education technology
How we're different
We believe the highest-impact work in science education is not teaching students facts but giving them the infrastructure to generate knowledge themselves. Nishan operates as a single coordinated organization pursuing a small number of ambitious efforts rather than a scattered collection of programs. We treat reliability and security as non-negotiable, because a platform that loses a student's work or exposes their data betrays the exact people it was built to serve. We are collaborative, we argue openly about how something should be built, and we value people who can ship quickly and still build things that last. The easiest way to understand what we care about is to use what we have shipped and to read the code behind it.
Logistics
Minimum education: None required. We evaluate candidates on what they have built and shipped, not on credentials.
Required background: A record of building and shipping software that people depend on, demonstrated through production systems, technical leadership, or comparable experience.
Commitment: This is currently a part-time and largely volunteer leadership role within a nonprofit organization. We are candid about this because we respect your time, and because the people who thrive here are motivated by the mission rather than the compensation.
Location: Remote, with occasional coordination across time zones. We are a distributed team.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every qualification listed. Research consistently shows that people from underrepresented groups are more likely to experience imposter syndrome and to disqualify themselves prematurely. We would rather read your application and decide together than have you decide not to submit it. We think broadening who participates in science is central to our mission, and that makes a range of perspectives on our team more important, not less.
A note on safety
Your safety matters to us. Nishan representatives will only ever contact you from our official organizational domain. We will never ask for money, fees, or banking information at any stage. If a communication seems unusual, do not click any links. Visit our official site directly to confirm any opening.
Come work with us
Nishan is a mission-driven nonprofit built by people who think the current distribution of scientific opportunity is indefensible and fixable. We offer meaningful ownership over the technical direction of a growing organization, a collaborative and intellectually honest team, and the chance to shape what student science is allowed to be. If that is the problem you want to work on, we want to read your application.
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