Chief Product Architect Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Location: Remote, United States (Pacific Time Zone preferred; Southern California a plus)

Aequitas Solutions is a mission-critical Student Information System (SIS) provider serving K–12 public school districts, with its primary markets in California and Michigan. Its platform, Q, supports the core administrative operations districts rely on every day: enrollment, attendance, compliance reporting, and data governance.

Aequitas competes on trust, customer responsiveness, and deployment flexibility. Unlike larger SIS vendors pushing districts toward centralized cloud hosting, Aequitas intentionally supports cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments, giving districts genuine control over their data and infrastructure. That flexibility is a deliberate competitive differentiator in a market where data locality and procurement caution are facts of life. Aequitas was acquired by Banyan Software in 2022 and is actively expanding its product capabilities and customer footprint.

Aequitas has a loyal, established customer base, a platform with strong underlying functionality, and a clear mandate to grow. The Chief Product and Technology Officer is the executive hire that activates that mandate: the person who takes full ownership of the product vision, technical strategy, and engineering execution, and drives the platform forward.

This is a role for a builder. With respect for the team and customer commitments already in place, the CPTO will establish AI-first development as the operating standard, define the modernization roadmap for a platform with a significant legacy technology footprint, and build the team structure and discipline needed to deliver on a multi-year product vision. There is real work to do, with real scope for impact.

The CEO operates as a genuine partner, not a day-to-day manager. The expectation is that the CPTO owns the function completely: how resources are deployed, how the team is structured, and how the product roadmap is executed. The CEO will communicate direction and flag when something is off course, but the decisions are yours. This is an environment that rewards entrepreneurial ownership and initiative. It is a good fit for someone who thrives with autonomy and wants to build something, not manage an established machine.

The CPTO reports directly to the CEO and sits on the Aequitas leadership team alongside the Director of Customer Success, Director of Finance, and heads of Sales and Marketing.

• You own the function. Full charter.
• Product vision, technical strategy, engineering execution, AI roadmap, deployment architecture. This role has genuine authority across all of it.

• The CEO relationship is collaborative. Autonomy with a real partner at the top.
• The CEO wants a peer at the table, not a line report waiting for direction. You will have the space to lead the function your way, with a leadership team that engages on outcomes, not process.

• Genuine competitive differentiation. A market position worth defending and extending.
• Aequitas's multi-deployment model gives districts options that larger SIS vendors do not. The company is actively investing in its on-premise and hybrid capabilities as a growth lever, and the CPTO plays a central role in that strategy.

• Good bones, ready for what's next. A platform with real depth.
• The Q platform has been built in close partnership with California and Michigan districts over many years. The customer base is engaged and loyal. The opportunity here is to modernize and extend a product that already works, not to rebuild from scratch.

• No exit pressure, no artificial runway. Banyan's buy-and-hold model means stability.
• Aequitas is a permanent part of the Banyan portfolio. Investment decisions are made with a long-term lens, not shaped by a pending transaction.

• Public education is the mission. The work has real-world stakes.
• Aequitas serves public school districts. The platform underpins enrollment, attendance, and state compliance reporting for approximately one million students across California and Michigan. The impact is tangible.

A culture built on trust and commitment

Aequitas is a close-knit organization with long-tenured employees, loyal customers, and a strong sense of responsibility to the districts it serves. The right leader will value that trust, build on it, and help the company evolve without losing what makes it strong.

Product and Platform Leadership

• Define and own the multi-year product and technology roadmap, shifting Aequitas from a customer-reactive posture to a market-facing one.
• Establish a formal product management discipline, including roadmap ownership, prioritization frameworks, and release planning.
• Balance product investment and innovation against platform stability, particularly during California's CALPADS and Michigan's MiDataHub compliance reporting cycles.
• Partner with the Director of Customer Success and district stakeholders to ensure roadmap decisions reflect real operational workflows.
• Support Sales and executive leadership with credible, accurate product positioning as Aequitas pursues growth beyond its existing customer base.

AI-First Product and Development Strategy

• Lead the implementation of AI-first development practices across the engineering team, in alignment with Banyan's AI mandate.
• Define and execute an AI product strategy focused on practical, explainable capabilities that improve district staff productivity, data quality, and compliance confidence.
• Ensure AI design respects district expectations around data locality, deployment boundaries, and the regulatory constraints of K–12 environments.
• Partner with Banyan's AI team and the internal AI Council to evaluate tooling, establish standards, and drive adoption across the development organization.

Engineering Leadership and Team Development

• Lead a team of approximately eight direct reports across development and database administration.
• Build team structure, shared processes, and cross-functional visibility where the engineering organization currently operates in silos.
• Establish development standards, quality expectations, and a release cadence that supports both cloud and on-premise customers.
• Evaluate team capability honestly and make the personnel decisions the business requires, with the judgment to do so in a culture that values long tenure and personal relationships.

Platform Architecture and Deployment Strategy

• Own platform architecture strategy across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise deployment models.
• Define and execute a modernization roadmap for a platform with a significant VB.NET legacy, without disrupting mission-critical operations or the customer experience.
• Ensure tenant isolation, security, and operational reliability across all deployment models.
• Develop the on-premise managed services opportunity as a strategic growth and retention lever.

Stakeholder and Cross-Functional Alignment

• Serve as the primary executive authority for product and technology decisions.
• Build a strong working partnership with the Director of Customer Success on roadmap priorities, product-CS alignment, and development resource allocation.
• Engage the Michigan consortium as a key co-development partner, navigating shared roadmap influence with care.
• Keep the CEO informed on key decisions, customer-facing risks, and anything with strategic or reputational implications before they become surprises.

Must-Haves

• Genuine AI-first development capability: an active practitioner who can lead a team through an AI development transformation.
• Strong technical foundation: infrastructure, architecture, and platform operations depth that earns the trust of a seasoned development team and holds up through a legacy modernization program.
• Hybrid, on-premise, or district-managed deployment experience: Aequitas's multi-deployment model is a strategic asset, and prior experience in this environment accelerates impact.
• Real product instincts: the ability to think beyond the existing customer base, define a roadmap with commercial logic, and own the product function with genuine conviction.
• Team-building experience in small, complex environments: a track record of creating structure, accountability, and team cohesion where it did not previously exist.
• Change management maturity: the ability to move a long-tenured team toward new ways of working without damaging the culture or losing the people worth keeping.
• US work authorization.
• Ability to work in Pacific Time; based out of Southern California strongly preferred.
• Low-ego, high-accountability leadership approach: brings a steady hand, owns outcomes, and builds trust across teams through consistency and follow-through.
• Credibility across technical and business stakeholders: able to earn the respect of engineers, product leaders, and long-tenured employees while maintaining alignment with customer-facing priorities.
• Sound judgment in pacing change: understands how to introduce meaningful evolution within a mission-critical, relationship-driven environment without creating unnecessary disruption.

Strongly Preferred

• K–12 software or EdTech experience, particularly familiarity with how public-school districts procure, fund, and implement technology. This is a meaningful differentiator.
• Legacy modernization experience: a track record of managing migration off an existing tech stack without disrupting a mission-critical customer base. VB.NET familiarity is a genuine plus.
• Background at companies under 200 employees: the culture is small, close-knit, and founder-adjacent. Experience at a comparable scale is a strong indicator of fit.

Compensation

The expected base salary for this position is: USD $200,000-$250,000, excluding incentives (when applicable). Salary is based on a number of factors including market conditions, location, and may vary depending on job-related skills and experience.