Founding Technical Lead, AI Systems and Engineering

We are hiring a Founding Technical Lead, AI Systems and Engineering at GotBuilt, with a direct path to becoming CTO.

GotBuilt is being created to turn ambitious ideas into secure, reliable, operating products by combining strong human judgment with AI powered development systems.

Our first product and proving ground is Ida, which stands for “I Do Anything.”

Ida began as a personal AI assistant and is evolving into a personal operating system designed to understand a person’s conversations, projects, schedule, health, business, files, relationships, and priorities, then help that person make decisions and take supervised action.

This is not a prototype.

Ida already has a functioning product, separate Test and Production environments, voice, memory, projects, a personal Library, deployment controls, security boundaries, and an active development system.

We are looking for someone who can take real ownership of technical execution.

That means:

• Owning architecture, infrastructure, security, access control, integrations, reliability, and scalability
• Translating product vision into clear build plans and release sequencing
• Reviewing and improving production code personally
• Directing work across Claude Code, Codex, and other AI engineering systems
• Building supervised development workflows that reduce duplicated work, branch collisions, weak testing, and unclear ownership
• Leading engineers, contractors, technical operators, and AI builders
• Moving work safely from idea to Test to Production

This is not a ceremonial CTO role.

It is not for someone who wants to manage from a distance, create presentations, or outsource every meaningful technical decision.

The right person has built and shipped real software, can still work directly in the code, understands AI systems, knows how to challenge weak technical decisions, and can move quickly without becoming reckless.

You do not need the perfect résumé.

You do need demonstrated judgment, ownership, technical depth, product instinct, and the ability to operate inside a fast moving environment.

The initial mandate is straightforward:

Understand the real state of Ida, audit the technical system, identify what should stay, change, simplify, or disappear, take ownership of meaningful releases, direct human and AI builders, and measurably reduce my involvement in daily technical coordination.

The role is based in Jersey City or New York City preferred, although exceptional remote candidates will be considered.

Full time is preferred. Contract to hire or founding partner structures may also be considered. Compensation includes competitive cash compensation with meaningful equity potential based on experience, commitment, and demonstrated ownership.

To apply, send me:

• A product you personally helped take from idea to Production
• The exact technical responsibilities you owned
• An example of a serious technical or operational failure you handled
• How you currently use AI in software development
• How you would evaluate and safely operate AI generated code
• Why this level of ownership is attractive to you

This is a chance to help build both a category defining personal intelligence product and the company that will learn how to build many products like it.

Pay: $120,000.00 - $140,000.00 per year

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Jersey City, NJ 07302