Description Position at VikingCloud
Chief of Staff to the CEO
Location: Remote, US, Central or Eastern Time Zone Preferred
You'll collaborate with each member of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to align priorities, resources, and decisions across the business, so our most important programs stay on track, on schedule, and on budget.
This Position
The Chief of Staff reports directly to the CEO and works with the ELT, functional leaders, and the PMO to provide a clear, consistent, and timely view of the company's key initiatives. You'll coordinate the flow of cross-functional information to ensure alignment and identify risks and opportunities early, so ELT members get what they need efficiently and can stay focused on running their functions and delivering on their priorities.
You'll partner with the CEO and the ELT to coordinate the executive operating rhythm and track key performance metrics and actions, so decisions are followed through to delivery. You'll work across every function represented on the ELT, including Operations, Revenue, Product, Technology, Marketing, Finance, HR, and Legal.
This role combines technical fluency, business breadth, and delivery discipline. You'll ask the right questions of technology programs, connect technical trade-offs to business priorities, and keep the company's strategic deliverables on track with clear owners, dates, and milestones.
How you'll work with the ELT
Within the ELT, you'll work most closely with the Chief Product Officer, who owns what we build, and the Chief Technology Officer, who owns how we build it. You'll support them by maintaining one integrated delivery plan, managing dependencies across functions, and bringing decisions to the CEO and ELT quickly. You'll also coordinate support from Operations, Finance, and customer-facing teams, so Product and Engineering can stay focused on building.
Priority programs
You'll support delivery of three priority programs:
• Product roadmap. Partner with the Chief Product Officer to track roadmap delivery against company goals and agreed milestones, and flag delays early.
• Platform migration. Partner with the Chief Technology Officer to coordinate Product, Engineering, Operations, and customer-facing teams around one plan to move customers to a single platform quickly and with minimal disruption.
• R&D budget reduction. Partner with the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Product Officer to review R&D spend, identify savings, and track delivery of a reduced budget while protecting roadmap priorities.
Responsibilities
Portfolio governance
- Facilitate portfolio intake, prioritization, and stage gates with the PMO, so the ELT invests in the right work.
- Facilitate a monthly portfolio review with the ELT, and bring clear go, pause, and stop options to the CEO.
- Support the Chief Technology Officer in planning capacity and resources across competing programs.
- Maintain one source of truth for status, budget, milestones, risks, and dependencies across major programs, so issues surface early.
Technology program delivery
- Work with Product and Engineering leaders to understand delivery plans, test assumptions, and help remove blockers.
- Review delivery and release metrics with program owners to spot schedule, quality, or resourcing risks before they affect customers.
- Translate technical status and trade-offs into plain business terms for the CEO and ELT.
- Help program owners hold vendors and service providers to statements of work and service levels.
- Work with the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Technology Officer to maintain a consolidated view of technology spend, forecasts, and savings.
- Support cross-functional integration planning for acquisitions.
Executive operating rhythm and strategy
- Facilitate annual and quarterly planning with the ELT, including OKRs, and help turn priorities into a funded, sequenced portfolio.
- Partner with the CEO and ELT to design and track the executive cadence, including agendas, pre-reads, decisions, and follow-through on actions.
- Work with each ELT member to turn the CEO's objectives into measurable deliverables with owners and dates, and track progress across every function.
- Spot gaps, dependencies, and friction between functions, and help the relevant leaders resolve trade-offs on resources, timing, and scope.
- Keep commitments visible across the ELT, and raise slippage with the CEO early, with options to recover.
CEO and ELT support
- Serve as a strategic resource to ELT members, providing cross-functional analysis and insight when they need it.
- Support Finance and Legal in preparing board and committee materials, including portfolio and delivery reporting.
- Work with Marketing on CEO communications, as required, including all-hands content and company updates.
- Triage requests for the CEO's time and work with the executive assistant on calendar priorities.
- Act as a sounding board for the CEO and ELT, and handle confidential matters with discretion.
What success looks like
By month 12, the ELT works from one governed portfolio, and the three priority programs are delivered or on plan.
• 30 days. Meet every ELT member and program lead. Inventory the key projects identified by the CEO, with owners, budgets, and status. Review the platform migration plan with the Chief Technology Officer, and help the Chief Financial Officer set the R&D spend baseline.
• 60 days. Portfolio intake and prioritization criteria agreed with the ELT. First consolidated portfolio dashboard live and shared with the ELT. R&D savings target agreed with the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Product Officer. Deliverables for each ELT member agreed and aligned with the CEO's priorities.
• 90 days. Stage-gate governance running for all tier-1 programs. Migration plan re-baselined with the Chief Technology Officer, including a customer cutover schedule. Roadmap milestones agreed with the Chief Product Officer and tracked against company goals.
• 12 months. Migration complete, with all customers on a single platform. Reduced R&D budget delivered. Tier-1 programs within agreed scope, budget, and schedule tolerance. Executive cadence running, with decisions and actions tracked through to delivery. Quarterly portfolio reporting in place for the CEO and board.
Qualifications
We're looking for a senior, collaborative leader who combines delivery discipline with the judgment to work alongside the CEO and ELT.
Required
- 15+ years of professional experience, including 5+ years leading large-scale program or portfolio delivery.
- A record of delivering multiple high-value, large technology programs on time and within budget, including at least one platform or customer migration.
- Experience establishing a PMO-driven operating cadence, including rolling out governance, tooling, and executive reporting.
- Fluency in agile, waterfall, and hybrid delivery, and the judgment to fit the method to the program.
- A strong technical background in software engineering, IT, or product, with the fluency to understand delivery plans and engineering metrics and form an informed view of whether a program is on track.
- Experience working across every business function and aligning senior leaders around shared, CEO-set goals.
- Hands-on cost management, including budget reviews, spend reduction programs, and capex and opex forecasting.
- Experience managing vendors and systems integrators against contracts and service levels.
- Experience presenting to CEOs, C-suite executives, and boards.
- Advanced proficiency with project and portfolio management tools, such as Jira, Smartsheet, ServiceNow, or Planview.
- Hands-on experience using AI tools to analyze data, automate reporting, and improve how teams plan and track work.
- Advanced PowerPoint and Excel skills, including building executive presentations, dashboards, and financial models.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to tailor messages for the CEO, ELT, board, and wider company.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, business, or a related field.
Preferred
- Prior Chief of Staff, head of business operations, or CEO's office experience.
- PMP, PgMP, or PfMP certification. SAFe or ITIL certification is also valued.
- Experience in cybersecurity, SaaS, or B2B services, including PCI DSS, SOC 2, or ISO 27001 programs.
- Background in a private equity-backed or high-growth company, including M&A integration work.
- Experience operating across multiple countries, time zones, and cultures.
- MBA or equivalent advanced qualification.
Skills and attributes
You'll bring these strengths:
- Delivery discipline. Keeps plans, decisions, and dependencies current without being chased, and takes personal accountability.
- Technical credibility. Earns the respect of engineers and product managers, separates real constraints from assumptions, and works with them to turn "not possible" into a workable plan.
- Collaboration. Makes other leaders more effective, shares credit for results, and builds trust across functions.
- Portfolio judgment. Recommends stopping or pausing work, not only adding it.
- Business translation. Explains technical issues in commercial terms and commercial priorities in technical terms, so every function works from the same plan.
- Strategic thinking. Breaks down ambiguous problems and recommends a clear path forward.
- Influence. Drives action with senior leaders without relying on hierarchy.
- Discretion. Handles confidential information with complete reliability.
- Composure. Stays calm under pressure while managing competing priorities and shifting deadlines.
