We are outsourcing pilot product, CTO had full-time job (now he doesn’t).
Pilot program launch is in 2 weeks.
Contractors are supposed to finish this week but are slipping behind.
My CTO doesn’t appear as concerned as me. He keeps saying there’s nothing we can do.
To me, their payment milestone is not enough security to be comfortable.
What do I do?
Lesson #1. Never plan a launch right after a deadline. Deadlines almost always slip. You're lucky if it only slips by weeks. More often by months because you'd get the code and you'll find the outsourced folks misinterpreted some key requirement.
Lesson #2. Launches always seem like a big deal. In retrospect its usually not. The customers that will be clamoring to use your product in your projections and the beta customers that you've lined up usually don't show up.
I e owned a design and dev shop that's done hundreds of these. I assure you, and encourage you to adjust your expectations: it will not launch on time.
Calm down
Make sure everybody within your company is aware of this.
Move the launch date to something which allows for the pilot to be ready for internal testing, internal testing to iron out silly bugs, time to fix those bugs and then a launch of your pilot
Be productive in the meantime. There are many things you can be doing instead of worrying/waiting for the product to be ready