Chief Executive Officer, Startup CEO

Confidential - High Technology Startup; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

Confidential - High Technology Startup seeks a founder-era CEO with a track record of building and scaling deeply technical hardware-software ventures. You will lead capital formation, set the strategic direction, and build a commercial organization capable of rapid growth with institutional investors and strategic partners.

You will own the fundraising, GTM execution, and P&L discipline while maintaining startup speed and a hands-on, results-driven leadership style.

Qualifications

• Serial entrepreneur or proven CEO with multiple company-building cycles and exits or strong revenue growth.
• Real access to capital with direct relationships to tier-one investors or strategic capital.
• Extensive network to secure seed through growth funding and strategic partnerships.
• Track record in deep tech hardware-software or defense-adjacent firms with verifiable outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to acquire first enterprise customers in new markets and channels.
• Executive-level technical fluency to translate complex tech to diverse audiences and win buy-in.
• Proven ability to recruit and retain elite talent to build a top-tier team.
• Experience taking a pre-revenue deep tech company to commercial traction and scale.
• A combination of visionary thinking and operational ruthlessness with urgent, ownership-driven pace.

Responsibilities

• Capital formation and leading raises through seed to growth stages with institutional investors and strategic partners.
• Customer acquisition across beachhead markets and building GTM execution.
• Go-to-market strategy to convert a technically superior platform into signed contracts and revenue growth.
• Team building and recruiting a commercial and operational team matching the technical foundation.
• External representation to investors, enterprise customers, defense stakeholders, and strategic partners.
• Full P&L ownership and the discipline to scale with startup velocity.

Skills

Serial entrepreneur

Proven CEO

Capital access

Extensive network

Enterprise sales

Technical fluency

Talent recruitment

Hardware-software experience

Defense-adjacent exposure

Urgent in execution

Job description

About the Company

Imagine that every building on earth is already wired with invisible intelligence. Signals that pass through walls, map movement, and capture behavior in real time, constantly, without anyone ever knowing. That intelligence has always existed. For decades, no one built the receiver. This company did. The next generation of wireless infrastructure and sensing is here.

The Company is a pre-commercial deep tech dual-use company with a passive RF spatial intelligence platform that turns the wireless signals already present in every environment into a real-time layer of spatial awareness. No active beacons. No GPS dependency. No tags. No opt-in. The platform sees what no other system sees, in the places that matter most: retail floors, hospital wings, enterprise campuses, and beyond.

Issued patents. A proven technical breakthrough. A product roadmap fully defined to commercial launch. The IP is protected, the founders, and technical roadmap are in place. What the Company needs now is the leader who knows what to do next, and who has the hunger, the track record, the network, and the vision to build something that has never existed before. This search is confidential.

About the Role

This is a founder-era CEO role for a serial entrepreneur or proven CEO with a real network and real access to capital. To be direct about what this is and what it is not: it is not a polish-the-press-release role. It is not a manage-the-existing-org role. It is not a first-CEO role for someone who has been a strong number two. It is not for someone who has spent their career inside large companies waiting for the next promotion.

This is a ground-floor seat at a company with category-defining potential, for someone who has built before, raised before, and sold before. Someone who knows what zero to one actually costs and who wakes up every morning ready to do it again at a scale most people cannot even picture.

The Company is not building a good company. The Company aims to build the biggest company imaginable in this space. If that sentence makes you lean forward instead of backward, keep reading. The co-founders remain actively engaged and will stand alongside the CEO on fundraising, relationship-building, and strategic positioning. You will not be alone. But you will be in front.

What You Will Own

• Capital formation, leading the raise from seed through growth stages with institutional investors, family offices, and strategic partners
• Customer acquisition across the beachhead markets: retail loss prevention, healthcare real-time location, and enterprise indoor intelligence
• Go-to-market strategy and execution, converting a technically superior platform into signed contracts and compounding revenue
• Team building, recruiting a killer commercial and operational team that matches the caliber of the technical foundation already in place
• External representation to investors, enterprise customers, defense stakeholders, and strategic partners
• Full P&L ownership and the operational discipline to scale without losing the startup’s speed

Who You Are

You are a serial entrepreneur or a proven CEO. Not a first-time CEO, not a strong number two looking for the seat, not a corporate executive making the leap. You have run a company before, raised institutional capital before, and either exited or scaled to meaningful revenue. You are doing it again because you want to, not because you need to.

You have been a CEO, GM, or senior P&L leader at one of these types of companies or have a deep understanding of the wireless sensing and infrastructure space:

• Enterprise wireless infrastructure: Aruba, Mist, Ruckus, Cradlepoint, Cambium, Extreme, Meraki, Juniper Mist
• Healthcare RTLS or RFID: CenTrak, Sonitor, AiRISTA, Securitas Healthcare, Cognosos, Stanley Healthcare, Midmark
• Indoor location or spatial intelligence: Quuppa, Pointr, Polaris Wireless, NextNav, Zebra AIT segment
• Retail loss prevention or asset visibility: Sensormatic, Checkpoint, Impinj ecosystem
• Adjacent deep-tech sensor or defense-adjacent companies that scaled from seed to Series B and beyond

You have sold into IT, security, operations, and clinical buyers, often inside the same deal. You understand enterprise procurement, the channel model, and how to make a 20-person hardware company operate with the discipline of a 100-person one. You can hold an investor conversation in the morning and a customer technical review in the afternoon without losing the thread.

You are comfortable with defense and dual-use adjacency, have no allergy to government customers, and have the disposition of an operator who finds hard physical-world problems more interesting than easy software ones.

Qualifications

• Serial entrepreneur or proven CEO. Multiple company-building cycles. You have started, scaled, and either exited or taken a company to significant revenue more than once. First‑time CEOs and lifelong number twos are not the fit for this role
• Real access to capital. Direct relationships with tier‑one institutional investors, family offices, or strategic capital that you have raised from before and can raise from again. When you tell us who you would call to lead the seed, you can name the partner, not the firm
• Real network. When the Company needs a meeting with a Fortune 500 retail CIO, a major hospital system COO, a sovereign wealth fund, or a defense program office, you know the person to call or you know who does. A-players already know your name, and you can bring them with you
• Verifiable track record at a deep tech, hardware-software, or defense‑adjacent company, with outcomes at every stage that can be checked
• Demonstrated success raising institutional capital from seed through Series C with the relationships and credibility to do it again on a defined timeline
• Demonstrated ability to acquire first enterprise customers in markets without an established commercial playbook. You have created the playbook yourself
• Technical fluency at the executive level. You do not need to be the engineer in the room, but you must deeply understand the technology, earn the engineering team’s trust on day one, speak the language of the platform, and translate complex technical capabilities credibly to any audience, from a retail CFO to a defense program manager to a sovereign wealth fund
• Ability to communicate highly technical products across RF sensing, hardware‑software systems, spatial intelligence, enterprise infrastructure, AI, and defense‑relevant applications
• Proven ability to recruit and retain elite talent. You have built a killer team before because you have done it before
• Experience taking a pre‑revenue deep tech or hardware‑software company to commercial traction and beyond
• The rare combination of visionary thinking and operational ruthlessness. You can hold the 10‑year picture in one hand and today’s close in the other
• You move with urgency. You operate with ownership. You close