The posting
ABOUT ARTSY AND ARTNET
Artsy and Artnet have combined to create the world’s largest online art marketplace and information platform. Together, we connect collectors, galleries, auction houses, and institutions across a global market valued at over $60 billion. Our products serve both the art world’s largest institutions and individual collectors – supporting art discovery, research and transactions.
We are at a pivotal moment. The combined company brings together the broadest customer base in the online art market, uniquely valuable proprietary data, a proven team, and new velocity as a combined organization. We believe the rapid evolution of AI will reshape not just how we build our products, but how our users interact with them. We want a technology leader who is as excited about that future as we are.
THE ROLE
We’re looking for a Chief Technology Officer to lead the combined engineering organization through a period of ambitious growth and technological transformation. This is not a maintenance role. It’s a mandate to retool how an entire organization builds software, to mentor a talented team through that transition, and to ensure that what we’re building today is designed for the world our users will inhabit tomorrow.
The right person is energized by a set of hard questions: Which parts of our platform are durable advantages, and which will be commoditized by AI? How should we build for an agentic user who discovers and transacts through AI intermediaries rather than browsing a website? Where are we underinvested? What does a world-class engineering team look like when AI fundamentally changes how software is written?
Reporting directly to the CEO, you’ll own the full technology function: engineering, infrastructure, and technical architecture. You’ll be the company’s eyes on the technology frontier, constantly scanning what’s emerging, and pressure-testing our assumptions about what’s feasible. As a key member of the senior leadership team, you’ll surface information and opportunities to help shape company direction and make the best possible strategic decisions.
Just as importantly, you’ll be a mentor and teacher to the entire organization. The transition to AI-augmented workflows isn’t just a tooling change, it’s a cultural one. We need a leader who can bring the team along, raise everyone’s capabilities, and create an environment where engineers, product managers, designers, and business operators are all fluent in what’s now possible.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
Retool How We Build
- Lead the adoption of AI-augmented development workflows across the engineering organization, fundamentally increasing what the team can ship and how fast they can ship it
- Mentor engineers, product managers, designers, and business operators in new ways of working, making AI fluency a core competency across the org, not just a tooling layer for a few
- Build on the team’s existing foundation of modern tooling, agile practices, and continuous delivery to foster a culture of continuous experimentation where the team is always testing what’s newly possible and incorporating it into how they work
- Establish the org as an industry reference point for how modern technology teams operate at the intersection of AI and product development
Build for Tomorrow
- Assess which elements of our platform represent durable competitive advantages and which are at risk of being commoditized or disrupted by AI
- In close partnership with the CPO, develop a technical strategy for the agentic future: how our platform should work when users discover, research, and transact through AI agents and intermediaries rather than traditional interfaces
- Identify where we are underinvested, in data, infrastructure, APIs, or capabilities, and build the roadmap to close those gaps
- Ensure our architecture is modular and adaptable, designed to evolve quickly as both the business and the underlying technology landscape change
Drive the Technical Side of the Post-Merger Integration
- Unify two legacy technology platforms into a coherent, modern architecture that serves both brands and all customer segments
- Make pragmatic, high-conviction decisions about what to consolidate, what to rebuild, and what to retire
- Bring together engineers from both organizations into integrated, mission-driven teams
Own Security and Infrastructure
- Own the company’s security and infrastructure posture as AI tooling and agentic product surfaces introduce new categories of risk and complexity
- Maintain rigorous standards for data integrity, system resilience, and platform trust as the business scales and the technology landscape evolves
Expand What Product Can Imagine
- Be the company’s scout on the technology frontier, constantly canvassing the market for emerging capabilities and translating them into concrete opportunities the product team can act on
- Serve as a key voice in the company’s product roadmap process, partnering with the CPO and broader senior leadership team to ensure strategic priorities are informed by the fullest possible picture of what’s technically achievable today and what will be achievable tomorrow
- Bring a data-driven and marketplace-native understanding of the infrastructure that powers discovery, pricing, transactions, and logistics, and a point of view on how AI will reshape each of those layers
- Make the product organization smarter by expanding the menu of options they’re choosing from, not by second-guessing their choices
WHO YOU ARE
- You've led engineering organizations through periods of significant change: post-acquisition integration, rapid scaling, or fundamental retooling, and you have the judgment that comes from having done it, not just studied it
- You have real, hands-on experience integrating AI into engineering workflows and are a strong enough technical architect to evaluate whether a solution, AI-generated or otherwise, is elegant or a mess, and explain why to both technical and non-technical audiences
- You bias toward speed. You know how to set an aggressive tempo, clear the obstacles that slow teams down, and create a culture where shipping is the default, not the exception
- You bring a sense of urgency to the work. You don't let decisions linger, you don't let projects drift, and you hold yourself and your teams to a standard that's obvious to everyone around you
- You think critically about moats and defensibility, and you connect engineering investments to business outcomes. You're comfortable in conversations about revenue, margin, and growth
- You take security and infrastructure seriously, particularly as AI introduces new categories of risk across development and product surfaces
- Location: New York or London; or East Coast Remote
NICE TO HAVE
- Experience with two-sided marketplace platforms, particularly those serving both B2B and B2C audiences
- Familiarity with the art world, luxury goods, or cultural industries
- Background as a technical cofounder or early-stage CTO who has built and shipped product with small, high-output teams
WHAT WE OFFER
- The opportunity to define how a combined, category-leading company builds technology at a moment when the entire discipline is being reinvented
- A CEO who is deeply engaged with the technology strategy and wants a true thought partner, not a service provider
- A talented, mission-driven engineering team ready to be challenged and developed
- A strong senior leadership team across product, operations, and finance
- Competitive compensation including meaningful equity in the combined entity
- A home base in New York or London, with the flexibility of a hybrid model
- Comprehensive healthcare & benefit options, including: medical, dental, parental leave, short- and long-term disability, Employee Assistance Program featuring free mental health support, 401k, commuter benefits, flexible spending accounts (FSA), health savings accounts (HSA), financial wellness support & resources, and more
The NYC base salary range for this role is $300,000-$350,000 annually. If London based, the salary is £200,000-250,000. All compensation packages include meaningful Artsy equity and competitive health benefits. Please see our “What We Offer” above for more detail, or speak to our Talent Acquisition Team to learn more!
Artsy and Artnet are committed to equitable compensation practices, and your offer will depend on the relevant experience and skillset you bring to the team.
Please note that we do not accept applications sent by email. You should submit your application directly through our careers website!
ARTSY AND ARTNET VALUES
Our values guide how we work, shape our decisions, and bring us together as one team. They keep us aligned and help drive us toward our mission: to expand the art market, support more artists, and bring more art into the world—helping us create a future where everyone is moved by art, every day.
Own the Outcome: We need all of us to achieve our mission. We take individual responsibility for team results, and we push to get the job done.
Move Fast, Learn Fast: We are building and reinventing every day, iterating quickly on multiple ideas to find what drives impact. We believe learning happens by doing and seeing what works.
Be Direct, Be Kind: We trust our colleagues and treat them with respect. Solving hard problems requires having hard conversations, and we support one another by being candid and kind.
Build for the Customer: We believe the art market has to evolve in order to flourish. We have a unique role to play in that growth, so we work hard to deeply understand the industry and build tools that solve real user needs.
Embrace Change: Achieving our mission in a dynamic tech environment demands constant change. We lean in to opportunity, face ambiguity bravely, and model to others and the industry a state of constant innovation and evolution.
Artsy is an equal opportunity employer. We value a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture. We encourage applications from all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, marital status, disability, and veteran status.
