Head of Technology

Role Description

The Head of Technology will own the bigger picture of VendHub’s product and technology function. This person will be responsible for translating business priorities into a coherent product roadmap, making technology decisions, coordinating engineering resources, and ensuring VendHub is scalable, reliable, commercially useful, and aligned with the company’s strategic goals.

This is not a narrow engineering management role and not a traditional product-only role. The right person must understand both product and technology. They need to be able to make decisions about what should be built, how it should be built, what tradeoffs matter, what technical debt is acceptable, and how the platform should evolve.

The Product Operations Associate will report to this person and will support the execution layer: tickets, QA, supplier data, product details, marketplace readiness, documentation, and internal coordination.

Key Responsibilities

• Product and Technology Strategy
  • Own the VendHub product and technology roadmap.
  • Translate company strategy, operator needs, supplier requirements, and revenue priorities into a clear product plan.
  • Make prioritization recommendations across marketplace, SaaS features, checkout, payments, integrations, reporting, user permissions, supplier onboarding, and platform tooling.
  • Determine what should be built internally, what should be integrated, and what should be deferred.
  • Ensure product decisions are commercially grounded and technically realistic.
• Technical Leadership
  • Own technical direction for the VendHub platform.
  • Make or oversee decisions related to architecture, infrastructure, integrations, APIs, payment flows, marketplace functionality, data models, permissions, security, scalability, and system reliability.
  • Manage internal and/or external engineering resources.
  • Ensure engineering work is properly scoped, sequenced, documented, tested, and shipped.
  • Identify technical risks before they create business problems.
  • Maintain a practical balance between speed, quality, cost, and scalability.
• Product Roadmap and Execution Management
  • Own the roadmap and development backlog at the strategic level.
  • Decide what gets prioritized, what gets deprioritized, and what needs more definition before development starts.
  • Coordinate with the COO, CEO, engineering, customer success, sales, finance, and supplier-facing teams to make sure product work supports business priorities.
  • Use the Product Operations Associate to maintain ticket hygiene, QA checklists, product documentation, marketplace data, and execution tracking.
  • Ensure the team is not building from vague requests, scattered Slack threads, or incomplete requirements.
• Marketplace, Payments, and Integrations
  • Own the technology roadmap for VendHub’s marketplace and supplier ecosystem.
  • Oversee checkout, payments, tax, shipping, attribution, supplier onboarding, product listings, rebates, reporting, and transaction-related workflows.
  • Ensure marketplace infrastructure can support equipment sales, supplier relationships, SaaS entitlements, operator activity, and future revenue share models.
  • Evaluate third-party tools and integrations where needed.
• Data, Reporting, and Platform Visibility
  • Define the key data VendHub must capture across users, operators, suppliers, products, transactions, subscriptions, equipment orders, and marketplace activity.
  • Ensure leadership has accurate reporting on adoption, GMV, product usage, supplier performance, feature utilization, and operational bottlenecks.
  • Own the integrity of the underlying data model and make sure reporting needs are considered before major features are built.
• Management of Product Operations Associate
  • Directly manage the Product Operations Associate.
  • Use the associate to support execution, documentation, QA, marketplace readiness, supplier data collection, ticket tracking, and status reporting.
  • Set clear expectations for what should be escalated versus what the associate should own independently.
  • Ensure the associate is reducing operational drag, not creating additional management burden.

What This Role Owns

• Product roadmap
• Technology strategy
• Technical architecture
• Engineering execution
• Platform scalability
• Build-vs-buy decisions
• Development prioritization
• Vendor/tool selection for technology workflows
• Product and technical tradeoff decisions
• Final acceptance of major releases
• Product/technology alignment with business goals

What This Role Does Not Own Day-to-Day

This role should not be the person manually chasing every supplier asset, cleaning every product listing, writing every QA checklist, maintaining every tracker, or documenting every bug. Those details should be owned by the Product Operations Associate, with escalation to the Head of Technology when there is a product, technical, or strategic decision required.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience across product, technology, engineering leadership, technical product management, SaaS platforms, marketplaces, or related technology environments.
• Strong technical judgment, even if not actively coding day to day.
• Experience owning or materially influencing product roadmaps.
• Ability to manage engineers, technical vendors, or development teams.
• Experience translating business needs into technical requirements and development priorities.
• Strong understanding of SaaS platforms, integrations, APIs, data models, payments, user permissions, and reporting workflows.
• Ability to make clear tradeoff decisions in a fast-moving startup environment.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work directly with executive leadership and convert strategic priorities into executable plans.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with marketplaces, payments, fintech workflows, B2B SaaS, e-commerce, logistics, equipment sales, or supplier/vendor platforms.
• Experience with Stripe, tax/shipping integrations, CRM systems, reporting tools, entitlement logic, API integrations, or admin tooling.
• Experience in vending, unattended retail, micro-markets, CPG, equipment sales, or operator-facing software.
• Prior experience managing junior product, product operations, QA, or technical operations personnel.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a senior operator-builder who understands that product and technology are not separate lanes at this stage of VendHub. This person should be able to understand the business model, shape the roadmap, make technical decisions, manage engineering execution, and identify where the platform needs to go before the organization has fully articulated it.

They should be comfortable pushing back on unclear priorities, incomplete requirements, unrealistic timelines, and low-value feature requests.

They should bring structure without slowing the business down.

Non-Negotiables

• Must have real technical judgment.
• Must be able to own both product roadmap and technology execution.
• Must be comfortable making decisions with incomplete information.
• Must be able to manage engineering resources.
• Must be commercially practical.
• Must be able to distinguish urgent noise from strategic product work.
• Must be able to manage a junior product operations resource effectively.