1) Company Description

We are an early-stage AI-driven SaaS company building a platform that analyzes complex PDF documents and generates structured, decision-ready reports. The product combines LLMs, document processing, and payment-gated workflows. We are currently in active development and are preparing for deployment, stabilization, and scale.

2) Role Description

We are looking for a Founding / Hands-On CTO (Part-Time initially) to take ownership of the technical direction during a critical phase of the product.

This role is focused on reviewing existing developer work, guiding architecture decisions, and supporting deployment to production. The engagement will remain part-time until the product is fully deployed, stable, and running reliably in production, with the possibility of evolving into a longer-term CTO role if aligned.

Key responsibilities include:

Reviewing and auditing existing backend, frontend, and AI-related development work
Challenging architecture, security, and scalability decisions
Supporting and overseeing deployment to production and post-deployment stability
Owning backend architecture, APIs, and authentication flows
Overseeing AI / LLM integrations with cost and reliability controls
Reviewing PDF ingestion, OCR, and document analysis pipelines
Owning payments, entitlements, and access-gating logic
Ensuring secure cloud infrastructure, logging, and monitoring
Acting as the final technical authority until the product is production-ready and stable

3) Qualifications

Required:

Strong hands-on experience with backend development (Node.js or Python)
Proven experience shipping SaaS products to production
Experience integrating LLMs / AI APIs in real-world applications
Solid experience with Stripe payments and webhook handling
Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
Comfortable reviewing, correcting, and guiding contractor-built systems
Product-focused mindset with strong delivery ownership

Desirable Criteria:

Experience with document-heavy systems (PDF processing, OCR, parsing)
Early-stage startup or founding experience
Exposure to investor or due-diligence technical reviews

Principal Architect (AI SaaS)