Founding CTO (Full-Time, Remote)

The Power Pause; Mission (KS); Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

High autonomy

Mission-driven work

Job summary

A dynamic startup in Kansas is seeking a Founding CTO to lead product and technical direction. This role will be responsible for hands-on development, customer feedback integration, and creating a strong technical foundation for future growth. The ideal candidate will have experience in startup environments, be product-minded, and able to work autonomously while collaborating effectively. Compensation includes a competitive salary and equity options.

Qualifications

• Experience as a startup CTO, founding engineer, or senior engineering leader.
• Ability to prioritize significant product developments.
• Enjoy building and iterating quickly.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical roadmap and prioritize business goals.
• Serve as the hands-on owner of the technical platform.
• Gather feedback and improve based on customer needs.
• Identify bottlenecks and enhance team efficiency.
• Create a strong technical foundation for growth.
• Improve internal efficiency, throughput, and the customer experience as the company scales.

Skills

Product-minded

Hands-on building experience

High-EQ collaboration

Autonomy

Customer-driven

Job description

The Opportunity

We’re hiring a Founding CTO who combines product thinking + technical execution. This role is for a hands-on builder who can assess what’s happening in the business today, form strong opinions on what to build next, and ship an initial product quickly, then iterate based on real customer feedback and real workflow needs.

This is not a “take requirements and build tickets” role. It’s a “learn the business, prioritize the highest-leverage problems, build the right solution, and iterate fast” role.

What you’ll own

1) Product + Technical Direction (Deciding what to build)

Partner closely with the CEO and leadership team to define the technical roadmap.

Focus on solving the most important problems we have today, staying grounded in customer needs and business priorities (and resisting distractions).

Translate business goals into clear product outcomes, tradeoffs, and sequencing.

2) Build and ship (Hands-on)

Serve as the hands-on owner of our early technical platform from architecture decisions to implementation.

Ship an MVP quickly, then improve it through iteration and learning.

Establish engineering standards that enable speed with reliability (testing, deployment, performance, security).

3) Customer feedback loops + workflow immersion

Spend time with the team and customers to understand workflows end-to-end.

Gather structured feedback from both sides of the marketplace and turn it into actionable product improvements.

Build a steady cadence of shipping, measuring, and refining.

4) Operational efficiency + experience improvement

Work closely with Hiring Services and Operations to identify bottlenecks and opportunities to improve:

internal team efficiency and throughput

consistency and quality of the customer experience

reliability and scalability of our processes as we grow

Build tooling and product improvements that reduce manual work and elevate the overall experience.

5) Technical foundation for durable growth

Make pragmatic build vs. buy decisions.

Ensure we have the right foundations in place around privacy, security, data integrity, and maintainability.

Create momentum and accountability in the product development cycle.

What success looks like (first 90–180 days)

First 30 days

Deep immersion: learn workflows, talk to customers, understand operational bottlenecks.

Clarify priorities and define an MVP scope aligned to core business goals.

Recommend immediate improvements (quick wins + longer-term roadmap).

Days 31–90

Ship an MVP and get it into real usage.

Implement instrumentation and feedback loops.

Iterate quickly based on usage + customer input.

Days 91–180

Improve adoption, reliability, and operational impact.

Create a repeatable system for prioritization, shipping, and learning.

Set the foundation for continued product development as the business scales.

The profile we’re looking for

You might be a startup CTO, founding engineer, or senior engineering leader with deep product proximity. You are:

Product-minded: you can prioritize what matters, not just implement what’s asked.

Hands-on: you enjoy building early versions and shipping quickly.

Pragmatic + fast: you don’t overbuild, and you optimize for learning.

High-EQ collaborator: you communicate clearly, partner well, and lead with empathy.

Autonomous: you create clarity and momentum without needing constant oversight.

Customer-driven: you want to understand the workflow, not just the spec.

Bonus points if you’ve worked on operational workflows, marketplaces, SaaS platforms, or systems that improve real-world service delivery.

Compensation

We’re open to a competitive mix of salary + meaningful equity to align incentives for long-term ownership and impact.

Why Sage Haus

Mission-driven work with real, lived customer impact

Proven traction and a clear need in the market

High autonomy, high ownership, and the chance to build something foundational