Ex-Founder / Ex-CTO

Job Description

Job Description

About the Role

This is a founding-team seat at an early-stage AI infrastructure startup building the operating layer for AI-native service businesses. The scope is deliberately flexible: engineering leadership, product ownership, or running the operating side of the company, shaped around what you do best. If you can articulate what you would own in your first 90 days, the role can be built around that.

What You'll Do

• Define and own a meaningful slice of the company, whether that is technical architecture, product direction, or company operations, from day one.

• Set the engineering direction and raise the bar for a small, high-trust founding team if you are stepping into the technical leadership seat.

• Ship product that matters to early customers and iterate quickly based on real-world feedback.

• Help establish the culture, standards, and pace that the rest of the company will be hired against.

What We're Looking For

• Has founded a venture-backed or bootstrapped company, regardless of outcome, OR served as CTO or first technical hire at a startup, OR shipped a product a team still credits you for, OR ran a service business in a relevant vertical.

• Can articulate a concrete, ambitious first-90-days plan and prefers a role built around your strengths over a fixed job description.

• Brings hands-on technical depth and sound engineering judgment sufficient to lead product and architecture decisions if stepping into the technical leadership seat.

• Operates at the pace and standard expected of a founding team: high autonomy, high output, low politics.

• Committed to working in person in San Francisco full-time.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary range: $150,000 to $250,000 USD annually. Equity is meaningful and sized for someone building the company, not joining it. Specific numbers are shared on the first call. Visa sponsorship and relocation assistance are available.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA, United States. This is a fully in-person role; relocation support is provided.