Vetted Chief Technology Officers in the NYC Metro

Zia Karim

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive AI and technology leader specializing in regulated enterprise and FinTech

Stamford, CT26y exp

“Founder with 10+ years in the startup ecosystem who is actively building an early-stage company and raising capital through partners in Singapore, Dubai, and LatAm. Deeply familiar with VC and accelerator models but intentionally pursuing a partner-led, B2B enterprise route to accelerate revenue, preserve control, and leverage direct customer and distribution access.”

“Startup-focused technology leader who has supported two startups over ~10 years, including conducting initial M&A/technology-fit research and serving as CTO to build required platforms. Recently automated manual marketing lead processing with agentic AI and drove workflow standardization through user interviews to align teams on a common process.”

“Serial venture builder/operator across ad tech, media delivery, search engines, international content management, and ecommerce; has raised up to $150M and been involved in 8 acquisitions or IP-acquisition events. Known for refactoring/re-engineering smaller or troubled platforms into higher-value businesses, including building yield-management algorithms and a Kafka-like system to improve ad delivery profitability.”

“Product-minded full-stack engineer with experience shipping engagement features and core communication systems at DribbleUp and Expys. Stands out for combining rapid MVP execution with rigorous iteration: delivered a leaderboard feature that lifted engagement by 8% initially and 20% overall, built a chat MVP in 3 days, and has hands-on experience deploying LangChain-based concierge agents with evals and human review.”

Mark Parolisi

Screened

Executive technology leader specializing in digital publishing and media platforms

Greater New York City Area, NY18y exp

“Engineering leader in digital media/news with 8 years leading globally distributed teams supporting 24+ consumer and internal web applications. Distinguishes himself as a hands-on player-coach who standardized tooling across teams, built an in-house authentication and entitlements platform, and led AI systems for newsroom draft generation and taxonomy workflows that improved efficiency and engagement.”

“Built both traditional internal tooling and LLM-powered systems during an internship, including a React/Python/AWS calculator onboarding platform and a production-style ROS2 RAG assistant over 10K+ documents. Stands out for combining full-stack delivery, stakeholder coordination, and practical AI reliability work like retrieval tuning, source-grounded answers, and low-confidence fallbacks.”

Robert Wheeler

Screened

Executive Technology Leader (CTO) specializing in cloud, AI/ML, and scalable product platforms

Manhattan, USA25y exp

“Technical leader and hands-on engineer with 20+ years of experience who has previously raised funding and exited a venture. Currently bootstrapping a new AI-direction startup with personal and family capital, leveraging structured financial planning and a relationship-driven approach to investor outreach.”