Founding CTO | AI Infrastructure Startup (YC-Backed)

We’re partnering with a well-funded, rapidly growing AI startup that is transforming how enterprises convert complex, unstructured information into trusted, AI-ready data.

This company is already working with many of the world’s largest investment firms and is now entering its next stage of growth. They are seeking a hands-on Chief Technology Officer to help scale both the technology platform and engineering organization while partnering closely with customers and founders.

This is a rare opportunity to join an early-stage company with proven product-market fit, strong revenue traction, and significant ownership potential.

The Opportunity

As CTO, you’ll serve as both a technical leader and strategic partner to the founders.

You’ll help define the company’s technical vision while remaining close to the code, customers, and product decisions that drive growth.

This role is ideal for a former founder, founding engineer, technical leader, or highly hands-on Staff/Principal Engineer looking for true ownership and the opportunity to shape a company at a critical inflection point.

What You’ll DoLead Technical Strategy

• Define the architecture and technical roadmap for a rapidly growing AI platform
• Guide decisions around data infrastructure, workflow automation, agentic systems, and enterprise integrations
• Drive engineering excellence while maintaining startup speed and agility

Partner with Customers

• Work directly with enterprise customers to understand complex business workflows
• Translate ambiguity into scalable technical solutions
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor during implementations and strategic discussions

Stay Hands-On

• Participate in architecture reviews, coding, debugging, and technical problem-solving
• Mentor engineers through design reviews and best practices
• Remain deeply connected to technical execution, particularly during the company’s next growth phase

Build and Scale the Team

• Recruit and develop high-caliber engineers
• Help shape the future engineering organization
• Foster a strong, high-performance culture without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy

Operate as a Company Leader

• Collaborate closely with founders on product strategy, hiring, customer success, fundraising, and key business decisions
• Become a key face of the company with customers, partners, and future investors

What We’re Looking ForTechnical Leadership

• Experience as a CTO, Founder, Founding Engineer, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, or similar leadership role
• Track record building and scaling production software systems
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and architectural judgment

Startup Experience

• Experience in high-growth startup environments
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity and limited structure
• Proven ability to move quickly and take ownership

Hands-On Engineering Skills

• Current, active coding experience
• Strong understanding of modern software development practices
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted development tools and workflows

Customer-Facing Ability

• Comfortable engaging directly with executives, technical stakeholders, and enterprise customers
• Ability to bridge business requirements and technical execution

Bonus Experience

Any combination of:

• Enterprise AI
• Data infrastructure
• Workflow automation
• Document processing
• Intelligent agents
• Financial technology
• Solutions architecture
• Forward Deployed Engineering
• Systems integrations

Why This Role?Meaningful Ownership

• Founder-level equity opportunity
• Ability to shape the future direction of the company
• Significant influence across product, technology, and company strategy

Real Traction

• Strong revenue growth
• Blue-chip enterprise customers
• Proven market demand
• Existing engineering team and technical foundation

Exceptional Challenge

• Solve complex, real-world AI and data infrastructure problems
• Work alongside ambitious founders and high-performing teammates
• Build technology that directly impacts enterprise operations.