Founding Lead Developer - Equity Only - NYC

About ZOVU ZOVU is building the Operating System for the modern restaurant .

Today, restaurants still rely on a fragmented collection of systems to run their business. One provider handles Point of Sale, another manages payments, another takes care of reservations, another runs loyalty, while staff planning, kitchen operations, analytics, marketing, and customer engagement often live in completely separate platforms.

We believe that should be one system.

ZOVU is bringing Point of Sale, payments, reservations, loyalty, Kitchen and Bar Displays, staff management, analytics, marketing, the Customer App, and Back Office together inside one connected Restaurant OS.

Our business model is different too. Instead of building our company around expensive monthly SaaS contracts, ZOVU operates primarily on a transaction-based model. We grow when our restaurants grow.

We are still at an early stage, which means the company, the product, and the technical foundation are evolving quickly. We operate as a fully remote international team and are building ZOVU with the ambition to scale globally.

The Role

We are looking for an entrepreneurial Founding Lead Developer who wants to become one of the key technical people behind ZOVU.

This is not a traditional development position where you receive a backlog, complete assigned tickets, and wait for the next task.

You will work directly with the founder and our existing development team and take significant ownership over how ZOVU is architected, built, scaled, secured, deployed, and maintained.

You will be expected to understand the existing codebase, challenge technical decisions when necessary, improve the architecture where required, and make sure the platform can support the complexity of a real restaurant environment.

That means thinking beyond individual features.

A payment cannot fail during a busy Friday evening. Orders need to reach the kitchen immediately. Reservations need to synchronize correctly. Restaurant data has to remain accurate. The POS has to stay fast. Integrations need to be reliable. And as thousands of restaurants eventually use the same infrastructure, the architecture needs to be ready for that growth.

You will help build that foundation.

As ZOVU grows, we expect this role to develop into broader engineering leadership. For the right person.

An Equity-Only Opportunity

This is currently an equity-only position .

There is no fixed salary attached to the role at this stage.

Instead, you will receive an ownership stake in ZOVU. The exact equity percentage, vesting structure, responsibilities, commitment, and future compensation arrangements will be discussed and agreed before joining.

We want to be completely transparent about this from the beginning.

This position is therefore not designed for someone who is simply looking for their next developer salary. It is designed for someone who wants to join early, take meaningful ownership, help build the company, and participate in the long-term upside if ZOVU succeeds.

We are looking for someone who thinks more like an owner than an employee.

The Technology You Will Be Working With

The current ZOVU codebase is primarily built in Dart and TypeScript .

Dart currently represents mainly of the codebase , while TypeScript represents second. The remaining platform includes CSS, PostgreSQL and PLpgSQL, JavaScript, and Kotlin.

Our infrastructure runs primarily on Google Cloud .

For this reason, experience with Dart, Flutter, and TypeScript is particularly valuable.

You do not need to be an expert in every technology we currently use, but you should be comfortable entering an existing full-stack architecture, understanding how its different components interact, and becoming technically responsible for it.

Beyond individual programming languages, we care heavily about your understanding of software architecture, PostgreSQL, APIs, authentication, cloud infrastructure, real-time systems, integrations, deployment processes, security, scalability, and production reliability.

What You Will Actually Be Responsible For

Your responsibility goes far beyond writing code.

You will help oversee the technical foundation of the complete ZOVU ecosystem, including our Point of Sale, payment integrations, reservations, loyalty syst…