Chief Technology Officer

FOUND; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading tech startup is seeking a Builder-CTO based in Los Angeles, CA, to take ownership of the full technical stack, from backend services to cloud infrastructure. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of software engineering experience and prior leadership in a high-growth environment. Responsibilities include architecting a scalable platform, leading a small engineering team, and collaborating with executive leadership to drive strategic initiatives. This role promises the chance to shape the technical foundation of a fast-growing company.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time building and scaling production systems.
• Prior experience as a technical founder, CTO, or senior engineering leader in a startup or high-growth environment.
• Deep expertise in modern backend and web architectures.
• Advanced knowledge of relational databases and data modeling.
• Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Architect a scalable, fault-tolerant platform for ingesting and processing high-volume data.
• Design event-driven and batch data pipelines for analytics and reporting.
• Lead a high-leverage engineering team.
• Partner with business teams to translate raw data into decision-ready metrics.

Skills

Software engineering

Cloud infrastructure

Data modeling

Performance optimization

Leadership

Architectural design

Job description

We are seeking a Builder-CTO — a deeply hands-on technical leader who designs systems, writes and reviews production code, and scales platforms alongside the business. This role is ideal for someone who has built complex systems early, hardened them for scale, and later built teams and processes around them.

You will own the full technical stack — spanning backend services, data pipelines, infrastructure, security, and developer workflows — while partnering closely with executive and product leadership on roadmap and execution.

Core Technical Responsibilities

• Architect a scalable, fault-tolerant platform for ingesting and processing high-volume, real‑time data.
• Design event-driven and batch data pipelines for modeling, analytics, and reporting.
• Own backend system design including APIs, services, and internal tooling.
• Define data models and storage strategies using relational databases and complementary data stores as needed.
• Ensure correctness, performance, reliability, and observability across distributed systems.
• Write, review, and maintain production code across backend and frontend systems.
• Set engineering standards for modern, type-safe backend services and component-based web interfaces.
• Lead architectural reviews, refactors, and technical debt reduction initiatives.
• Establish testing strategies (unit, integration, load) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Own cloud architecture and production deployments.
• Design scalable infrastructure for ingestion, processing, analytics, and reporting workloads.
• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and cost‑optimization strategies.
• Ensure security best practices, data privacy, and access controls across systems.

Data & Analytics Systems

• Build and evolve data modeling and analytics pipelines.
• Ensure data accuracy, reproducibility, and trust across internal and external reporting.Support internal dashboards and customer‑facing analytics surfaces.
• Partner with business teams to translate raw data into meaningful, decision‑ready metrics.

Engineering Leadership

• Build and lead a small, high-leverage engineering team.
• Hire senior engineers capable of owning large system components end‑to‑end.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, design sessions, and architecture planning.
• Balance speed and quality in an early‑stage environment.
• Create lightweight processes that enable rapid iteration without sacrificing reliability.

Executive & Product Partnership

• Translate business requirements into technical architecture and execution plans.
• Partner with Product, Sales, and Operations to support enterprise customers, integrations, and reporting needs.
• Contribute to company-level strategy, technical due diligence, and investor conversations.
• Evaluate build‑vs‑buy decisions and third‑party integrations.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time building and scaling production systems.
• Prior experience as a technical founder, CTO, or senior engineering leader in a startup or high‑growth environment.
• Deep expertise in modern backend and web architectures.
• Advanced knowledge of relational databases and data modeling.
• Hands‑on experience with cloud infrastructure and distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of analytics, performance optimization, and reliability.
• Proven ability to stay hands‑on while leading teams and making architectural decisions.

Strong Plus

• Experience with real‑time data ingestion or data‑intensive platforms.
• Background in advertising, marketplaces, or analytics‑driven products.
• Experience scaling platforms from MVP to enterprise‑grade systems.
• Familiarity with privacy, compliance, and enterprise data requirements.