CTO (Early-Stage Deep Tech Startup)

Safemind AB; Stockholms kommun; Hybrid; SEK 1,800,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful long-term upside through an option program

Early traction with enterprise customers

Strong investor backing

Job summary

A deep-tech startup is seeking a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead technical strategy and engineering in a high-ownership role. You will define the architectural vision, engage with enterprise customers, and grow the engineering team while tackling complex performance challenges. The ideal candidate has a strong engineering background, preferably with experience in startups or scale-ups, and must be skilled in system design, C++, and JVM environments. This position offers the opportunity for significant influence and growth within a recently funded company in Gothenburg, with a hybrid work setup.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in a senior engineering or technical leadership role.
• Strong foundation in system design and performance.
• Hands-on experience with performance-critical systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the engineering team.
• Define and own the architectural vision and technical roadmap.
• Engage with enterprise customers throughout the lifecycle.
• Ensure DevOps, observability, and reliability practices across the stack.
• Engage with enterprise customers through pre-sales to expansion, translating tech into value.

Skills

System design

Performance and scalability

C++ and JVM-based environments

Communication skills

Linux

Communication

Education

Advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or Physics

Tools

Profiling tools

Elasticsearch

OpenSearch

Apache Lucene

Job description

Our client is a recently funded, venture-backed deep-tech startup tackling one of the most pressing infrastructure challenges of our time: the escalating cost of large-scale data search. They are building a performance-enhancing plugin for widely adopted enterprise search platforms, with deep integration into Lucene-based search stacks. Their technology significantly improves query execution and resource efficiency, often reducing infrastructure requirements by 25–50% for large-scale search workloads.

The result: higher throughput, lower cloud spend, improved scalability, and meaningfully reduced data center energy consumption.

With early commercial traction among enterprise customers and strong backing from experienced investors, the company is now entering a critical growth phase.

The Role

This is the company’s first senior technical leadership hire.

As CTO, you will own the full technical agenda, from architecture and engineering leadership to shaping the product and contributing to the company’s overall strategy. You will work closely with the founding team while remaining involved in shaping the core system.

This is a high-ownership role in an early-stage environment, focused on solving hard problems across query execution, indexing, compression, memory management, and I/O performance at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the engineering team, mentoring early talent and shaping a strong technical culture
• Define and own the architectural vision and technical roadmap
• Drive development of core systems, including query execution pipelines, indexing, compression, and memory efficiency
• Establish engineering best practices across performance, reliability, and deployment (DevOps, SLOs, observability)
• Provide technical leadership on the most critical parts of the system, particularly where performance and correctness are essential
• Engage with enterprise customers across the full lifecycle — from pre-sales and onboarding through to expansion — translating technical capabilities into tangible value
• Monitor the evolving landscape in search, databases, and infrastructure

Who This Role Is For

This role is designed for a technical leader who enjoys combining technical depth with leadership and customer-facing impact.

You might come from a senior or principal engineering background and be ready to step into a broader leadership role — or you may already have experience as a CTO or founder and are excited to return to a deeply hands‑on position in an early-stage company.

• Enjoy working close to the metal on hard performance problems
• Want real ownership over architecture and technical direction
• Are motivated by building both systems and teams from an early stage

What We’re Looking For

• Proven experience in a senior engineering or technical leadership role, with startup or scale‑up exposure as a plus
• Strong foundation in system design, performance, and scalability — able to engage confidently at a deep technical level
• Hands‑on experience with performance‑critical systems, ideally including C++ and JVM‑based environments
• Comfortable working with Linux, profiling tools, and production systems where performance is non‑negotiable
• Track record of shipping software to enterprise customers
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to work across technical and non‑technical stakeholders

Nice to Have

• Experience with Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or Apache Lucene internals
• Background in information retrieval, storage engines, compression, or high-performance computing
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or similar

The Opportunity

• An opportunity to take on a foundational CTO role in a recently funded, highly ambitious company
• A genuinely hard technical problem at the intersection of algorithms, systems, and infrastructure with clear value for enterprise customers
• Opportunity to define technical direction, build a team, and shape engineering culture from an early stage
• Meaningful long‑term upside through an option program
• Early traction with enterprise customers and strong investor backing
• Gothenburg-based, with a hybrid setup and close collaboration with the founding team