CTO / Founding Engineer

Impact Market; København; Hybrid; DKK 1,200,000 - 2,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity/warrant package

Flexible hours

5 weeks holiday

Impactful work

Job summary

Impact Market seeks a CTO / Founding Engineer to lead product and engineering in Copenhagen. You will own the platform, write the code, and shape the tech roadmap with the founders and clients. We value AI-native approaches and strong ownership in a compact team.

You'll work on Rust, Postgres, cloud, and data pipelines, making big calls on architecture, language, and future direction while growing into the science of forecasting and impact measurement.

Qualifications

• Minimum 4 years of experience shipping production software (backend or data-heavy systems).
• Experience with Rust or willingness to go deep in it.
• Experienced in using AI tools daily and applying them well.
• Comfort with data: SQL, pipelines, statistics and forecasting.

Responsibilities

• Own the platform and decide what to keep, rebuild or build next.
• Make big architectural calls, including language choices.
• Be AI-native and apply AI across coding and technical tasks.
• Build agents for account management, client reporting and forecasting.
• Grow into the science by collaborating on statistical significance and forecasting.

Skills

Rust

Backend software

AI integration

SQL & data pipelines

Cloud

Ownership under ambiguity

Tools

PostgreSQL

Rust

Cloud platforms

APIs

Job description

Every year, European governments spend billions on mobility: subsidies, contracts, licences, public transport. Most of that money is spent with no clear idea of what it buys for society.

We're building the tech layer that changes that.

What We Do

Impact Market builds MIMA, the Mobility Impact Market. On our platform, cities and transport authorities incentivise mobility operators (bike share, e-scooters, car-pooling, car sharing, bike leasing) for trips according to their benefit to society: a car trip replaced, emissions avoided, space and congestion saved, health improved, a neighbourhood connected. By estimating the socio-economic impact of each trip, we design smart incentives that get the most social value out of public funds.

The idea is much bigger than mobility: governments paying for the outcomes they want, with the evidence to back it up. Mobility is our first market, and we intend to move into other areas of public spending.

Where we are

• Funded with 12+ months runway
• Several paying public-sector clients
• A production platform (prod + staging), with live trip and rider-survey data from operators flowing in since August 2026
• A team of 3. You'd be number 4.

The role

You'll be our first technical hire and will lead product and engineering. For now that means hands fully dirty: you write the code. No agencies, no outsourcing.

• Own the platform. Rust, Postgres, cloud, our RiderSurvey API, and the data pipelines from operators. You'll inherit a working MVP and decide what to keep, what to rebuild and what to build next.
• Make the big calls, including the language. We chose Rust deliberately: we think a strict compiler and type system are the right guardrails for building fast with AI. If you have a better argument for something else, convince us.
• Be AI-native. We expect you to use AI seriously in coding and every other technical task. That's how a team of four does the work of fifteen.
• Build agents that run the company with us, for account management, client reporting and forecasting.
• Grow into the science. Together with a future R&D lead, you'll work on the statistical significance of measured impacts and on forecasting how markets respond to incentives.
• Shape the product with the founders and our clients. You'll be in the room with transport authorities, not behind a ticket queue.

You

• Have minimum 4 years of relevant experience shipping production software, ideally backend or data-heavy systems
• Senior and still love writing code every day? Even better.
• Know Rust, or are genuinely motivated to go deep in it (not just 'willing'). (We are not dogmatic about Rust, but we have a working platform built with care, so changing direction would take strong conviction.)
• Already build with AI tools daily and have opinions about how to do it well
• Are comfortable with data: SQL, pipelines, and an appetite for statistics and forecasting
• Take ownership when things are ambiguous, and like it when nobody tells you how
• Care about the mission. You don't need to have read our founder's book, The Next Democracy, but its core ideas about how citizens and governments could work together - is fundamental to what we do. If they don’t excite you, this probably isn’t the right fit.

Bonus points for experience in mobility or transport, govtech, causal inference or experimentation, or privacy-by-design and GDPR.

What We Offer

• A real say in everything. Stack, product, architecture, culture and who we hire next.
• Title decided together. We're advertising this as CTO / Founding Engineer and will settle the title with you based on your experience and ambitions.
• Competitive startup salary plus a meaningful warrant package, designed to make total compensation comparable with bigger-company offers
• 5 weeks of holiday and flexible hours
• Work that matters. Help redirect public money towards what actually improves people's lives.

Location

Copenhagen is our home, and we'd love you here; relocation is very welcome. If you stay elsewhere, you must be based in the EU and work in EU time zones. You'd spend your first 1–2 months with us in Copenhagen, then 2–4 days here every month after that.

Process

• Quick online intro call with Erdem (CEO)
• In-person meeting
• A challenge based on a real problem from our platform
• Second meeting with the team
• Offer