The role
We are looking for a Founding CTO – someone who is equal parts architect, coder, product manager, and team builder. You will not just "write code"; you will define our technical culture, choose the stack, deploy to production, and fix things at 2 AM because you own it.
What you’ll do (first 3–6 months)
- Review/rebuild the MVP (likely Node.js, Python, or your preferred stack – you decide).
- Set up CI/CD, hosting (AWS/Vercel/whatever you trust), and basic monitoring.
- Work directly with the founder and sales partners to prioritise features that actually close deals.
- Ensure basic security (no embarrassing breaches before launch).
- Document everything so a future junior dev can onboard quickly.
What you’ll do (6–12 months)
- Hire and lead 1–2 freelance developers when the product gets traction.
- Move from MVP to scalable architecture (multi-tenancy, backups, rate limiting).
- Help raise a seed round by presenting technical roadmap to investors.
What we offer
- Equity only – no salary yet. We are transparent: you will not receive a euro or dollar until we either raise funding (seed round) or reach €10k+ monthly recurring revenue.
- Significant ownership: We are thinking 15–25% fully diluted (to be negotiated based on your time commitment and existing IP). This is real co-founder territory, not an advisor's 1%.
- Full technical autonomy: You choose the stack, tools, and workflows. No technical debt forced from above.
- Remote-first, async culture: No standups for the sake of standups.
- First hire rights: Once we have money, you will be CTO with a salary and a team. The equity remains yours.
What we are NOT offering
- Any cash compensation for the first several months.
- A "normal" CTO role with a support team – you will also write code, debug, and do DevOps.
- A safety net. This is a startup. It may fail.
Who this is for
- An experienced full-stack developer (5+ years) who has been a tech lead or solo founder before.
- Someone who can afford to work part-time (evenings/weekends) on equity for 3–6 months.
- You love early-stage chaos: changing requirements, manual testing, sleeping next to your laptop.
- You have a portfolio or GitHub that shows you ship fast and clean.
- You are comfortable with English as working language.
Who this is NOT for
- Someone who needs a monthly salary to pay rent (please prioritise yourself first).
- A manager who only wants to "lead" but not touch code.
- Someone who expects a polished product requirements document – you will help write it.
Equity details (to be discussed)
- We will sign a simple Founders' Agreement with a standard 4-year vesting schedule (1-year cliff).
- The exact percentage depends on your experience, how much IP you bring, and your planned weekly hours.
- Example range: 15% for a part-time (15h/week) CTO with no existing code – up to 25% for a full-time (40h/week) CTO who also invests small capital (€1-2k) into cloud/hosting costs.
- If we raise a seed round, your shares remain, and we will also pay you a market CTO salary from that moment.