About the Opportunity: We are a founder team with deep, first-hand domain expertise in Human Resources - spanning talent acquisition, performance management, workforce planning, and employee experience. We have identified high-impact, commercially viable gaps in the HR technology landscape and are building platforms to address them. We are at two concurrent inflection points: one product at the idea-to-MVP stage, and a second with an early prototype ready to be shaped for production. We are looking for a rare individual who wants to be more than a senior hire, someone who will sit at the founding table, co-own the technology vision, and build something of lasting value.
What this role is, and is not: This is a co-founder role, not a CTO hire into an established organisation. You will define the technology strategy from first principles, make foundational architectural decisions and, especially in the early phase, be deeply hands on. If you thrive in ambiguity, move fast without losing rigour, and want meaningful equity in what you help build, this is the opportunity.
The Role As Co-Founder & CTO, you will be the sole technology leader at the founding stage, responsible for the end-to-end technology strategy, product architecture, and engineering execution across both ventures. You will work in close partnership with the domain-expert co-founders to translate deep HR insight into elegant, scalable, AI-native products. This is an architect-and-builder role in equal measure. In the near term you will be highly hands-on, making technology choices, building early versions, and establishing the engineering foundation. As the ventures scale, you will hire and lead an engineering team while remaining the strategic technology voice at the leadership level.
Key Responsibilities:
Technology Strategy & Architecture
- Define and own the end-to-end technology strategy for both products, aligned with business goals and commercial timelines
- Make foundational architectural decisions - cloud infrastructure, data models, API design, AI/ML stack, all with long-term scalability as a non-negotiable constraint
- Evaluate, select, and own the technology stack across each product, with a clear rationale for every major choice
- Establish engineering standards, security posture, and data governance practices from day one
Product Development & Execution
- Lead the rapid prototyping and MVP development of the idea-stage product while overseeing the production readiness of the early-prototype product
- Apply product management thinking alongside engineering rigour - own the product roadmap's technical dimension, write clear specs, and make scope trade-offs without losing sight of user value
- Drive fast, iterative development cycles that produce working, demonstrable output, and not just plans
- Ensure both products are built for production from the start: resilient, secure, observable, and maintainable
AI & Emerging Technology
- Architect and integrate AI/ML capabilities as a core part of both products - not as an add-on, but as a primary value driver
- Stay ahead of the rapidly evolving AI landscape: evaluate large language models, agentic frameworks, RAG architectures, fine-tuning approaches, and emerging tooling with a critical, commercially grounded lens
- Translate AI capabilities into practical, reliable product features - managing the gap between what models can do in a demo and what they can do in a production environment at scale
- Identify and mitigate AI-specific risks: hallucination, bias, data privacy, and explainability - especially in the HR context where decisions affect people's careers
Co-Founder Responsibilities
- Participate fully in the strategic direction of the venture - this is a seat at the table, not a reporting line
- Represent the technology perspective in conversations with investors, customers, and partners with clarity and confidence
- Manage competing priorities across two products intelligently, communicating trade-offs clearly to co-founders and stakeholders
- Build and lead the engineering team as the venture scales - hiring for culture and capability, not just credentials
- Contribute to commercial thinking: understand unit economics, customer needs, and the competitive landscape well enough to make technology decisions that create business advantage
What Success Looks Like | First 12 Months
- Technology strategy defined for both products. Stack decisions made. MVP roadmap scoped and agreed with co-founders.
- Working MVP of the idea-stage product in the hands of early users. Production-ready version of the prototype product with initial paying customers or pilots.
- Both products generating early commercial traction. AI capabilities embedded as core product features, not experiments. First engineering hires made.
- One product demonstrably scaling. Technology organisation structured for the next phase. Co-founder operating as a confident external voice with customers and investors.
Experience Profile
- 12 to 18 years of technology experience, with a meaningful portion in product-led companies or ventures. However, we are agnostic to years of experience, if other must haves are met
- Demonstrable track record of building and scaling at least one product to commercial success - you have lived through growth, not just read about it
- Hands on engineering background: you can write, review, and reason about production code because this is not a role for someone who last coded a decade ago
- Experience working in or alongside domain-specific industries (HR, FinTech, HealthTech, or similar) is a strong advantage
- Experience as a founding team member, early-stage CTO, or technical co-founder is highly preferred
- Exposure to enterprise or B2B SaaS products - understanding of how large organisations buy and integrate technology
- Strong grasp of data architecture: relational databases, data pipelines, analytics, and the data foundations that HR platforms depend on
High Valued - Not Mandatory
- Prior experience in HR technology - understanding of HRMS, ATS, performance, or L&D platforms
- Experience with assessment or people analytics platforms
- Familiarity with compliance and data privacy requirements relevant to employee data (PDPB, GDPR)
- Network within the HR technology or broader enterprise SaaS ecosystem
- Experience raising technical due diligence for investor conversations
Equity and Compensation: This role carries a meaningful equity stake commensurate with co-founder status and the early stage of the venture. Compensation in the early phase will be below market - we are transparent about this. We are looking for someone who is motivated by ownership, the opportunity to build something significant, and the belief that the equity upside justifies the near-term trade-off. The exact structure will be worked through openly with the right person.
