CTO

About the role

This is a true founding technical seat, not a CTO title on top of an existing engineering org. You will be the sole technical decision-maker with no escalation path above you and no platform team below you, owning architecture, security posture, roadmap sequencing, vendor selection, and every subsequent hire. The near-term mandate is to get the platform through the security and controls threshold required to transact with institutional lenders, then move it from functionally complete to institutionally production-ready. The founders are open to naming the right person a co-founder, and equity is sized accordingly. You will represent the company’s technical position to lenders, auditors, and investors, and build the engineering team from zero with your own judgment.

Responsibilities

• Own the full technical strategy and roadmap, including the sequencing decision between hardening the current platform for launch and rebuilding for long-term scale
• Bring the platform through the security, controls, and audit readiness required for institutional lender onboarding, including SOC 2 readiness, penetration testing, RBAC, activity logging, and evidence documentation
• Establish architecture and engineering standards: modular structure, enforced boundaries across user surfaces, a versioned component library, reviewed migrations, and end-to-end type safety
• Take ownership of the financial spreading and comparison engines, including accuracy validation, confidence gating, and the audit trail institutional diligence teams will ask to see
• Recruit, hire, and lead the engineering team, and set the standards every contributor (including contractors) is held to
• Partner directly with two non-technical co-founders, translating business requirements into technical specifications and teaching the technical side of the business
• Represent the platform's technical position to lenders, auditors, and prospective investors
• Own CI/CD, observability, performance, and infrastructure cost as the platform scales

Requirements

• A track record as the primary technical leader at an early-stage company, taking a product from MVP through scale in production (once successfully is enough; twice is better)
• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience with meaningful time in a senior technical leadership seat, or equivalent experience providing comparable depth
• Senior-level proficiency across a modern TypeScript stack: React, tRPC, PostgreSQL with an ORM such as Drizzle, monorepo architecture, Zod, and end-to-end type safety from schema through UI
• Demonstrated ownership of security and compliance work in a regulated or institutionally scrutinized environment, including audit preparation and remediation
• Proven success partnering with non-technical founders or executives who hold the domain expertise, with a genuine preference for that dynamic
• A communication rhythm that is constant and unprompted: daily cadence, working sessions, and bad news delivered early
• Willingness to hold and defend a strong technical opinion, including telling the founders they are wrong and explaining why

Preferred Qualifications

• Fintech, lending, or other regulated-industry experience, particularly having carried a platform through SOC 2 or bank vendor onboarding
• Experience building and retaining engineering teams, with people who want to follow you
• Comfort operating in an AI-assisted development environment while maintaining review discipline and code quality