Vice President Research And Development

At HiO, we’re on a mission to help SMB's deliver world-class customer experiences (CX) - by providing them AI superpowers once reserved only for the largest enterprises.

The future of CX is AI and humans working in harmony, creating intelligent, personal and high-impact engagement that saves time, builds trust and drives growth.

We’re looking for our first VP of R&D and work side-by-side with our founding team, seasoned executives from Wix and high-growth ventures.

You’ll be hands-on jumping between frontend, backend, and AI-while shaping the product, the stack, and the team from the ground up. Riding the wave of AI revolution, using data and AI are the foundation of how we design, deliver, and evolve our product.

If you’re motivated by building real products with a small, sharp team and solving problems that actually matter, this is your seat at the table.

We’re looking for a hands-on (Must) technical builder with a founder’s mindset, who loves to turn ideas into real products.

Partnering directly with our US-based CEO, you’ll be responsible to develop intuitive, data-driven, AI-powered experiences that help SMB's thrive.

Responsibilities

● Design and execute the architecture and core platform — including data ingestion, orchestration, integrations, APIs, and multi-tenant foundations.

● Define and operationalize the AI/ML technology stack (LLMs, RAG, evaluation frameworks, data flywheel and safety protocols) from prototype to production.

● Establish engineering best practices for CI/CD, monitoring, security, and operational excellence.

● Build and lead a high-impact R&D team in Israel, while managing external contractors and vendors as needed.

● Partner with product leadership to shape the roadmap, balancing speed, reliability, and regulatory requirements.

● Implement scalable data governance, privacy, and security frameworks to support growth and compliance.

Requirements

● 10+ years building and scaling production systems; 3+ years in leadership (Senior Director, or VP/CTO level). At least 1-2 startup environments - Must.

● Proven track record taking mobile, desktop and web products from A to Z - delivering both core platforms and customer-facing applications.

● Strong full-stack skills, with the ability to work across frontend, backend, AI, and mobile. You are a Master in using and optimizing recent AI frameworks.

● Hands-on AI experience (LLMs, RAG, data pipelines, guardrails). ML is nice to have.

● Product-oriented, data-driven, and iterative in approach.

● Experience building B2C / B2B2C platforms and mobile apps that delight end users.