Food Safety Diary
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) — Founding Team
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) — Founding Team
Food Safety Diary | Equity-Based | UK (Remote - Monthly meetings)
The Opportunity
Food Safety Diary (FSD) is an AI-powered food safety and compliance platform for the UK food industry, built for the businesses legally required to manage food hygiene. We're moving the industry from outdated paperwork to an intelligent digital platform — and we're building something significantly more ambitious than a digital checklist.
We're looking for a hands-on, builder-minded CTO to take full technical ownership of the platform and lead it from its current state to a polished, scalable, market-leading product — including a substantial AI roadmap that sits at the heart of our long-term advantage.
This is a founding-level role for someone who wants to take real ownership in their work, real influence, and a meaningful stake in a company with genuine category-defining potential.
Honest Context
We believe in transparency. Our platform (Flutter mobile app + web, PostgreSQL) is already built and functional, but it needs serious engineering work — security hardening, resolving technical debt, completing features to a high standard, and building out our AI capabilities from the ground up.
This is not a role for someone who wants a finished system to maintain. It's for a builder who wants to take an existing product with a real market opportunity, fix what needs fixing, build what's planned, and shape the technical direction of the company.
The founder has 20 years of food industry experience, has invested significantly in the platform, and is actively working toward funding. You'd join at a pivotal, pre-funding, pre-launch moment.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
The full product vision, technical roadmap, and AI strategy are shared with shortlisted candidates under NDA.
What You'll Own
- Full technical ownership of the platform — mobile, web, backend, and database
- A security rebuild and the resolution of inherited technical debt
- Completing and rebuilding features to a production-ready, market-leading standard
- Architecting and building our AI capabilities — central to our differentiation
- Key third-party and data integrations
- Building and leading the engineering team as funding arrives
- Helping make the platform credible to investors and supporting the raise
What We Need From You
You must be genuinely hands-on. At this stage we need someone who gets into the code themselves and ships — not only manages others. This is essential.
You must be able to confidently build everything that's planned — a secure, scalable, AI-powered, multi-sided platform — and get it done to a high standard. We need proven capability, not potential.
Essential experience
- Proven track record as a CTO, technical co-founder, or senior technical leader in a startup, with products you've personally shipped
- Strong hands-on experience with Flutter (cross-platform mobile)
- Ability to own and modernise a PHP backend, plus Node.js and PostgreSQL expertise
- Strong cybersecurity fundamentals — authentication, encryption, secure API design, SSL/TLS, and secure handling of sensitive data
- Real experience integrating AI into live products — via modern AI APIs (LLMs, vision models, RAG) and/or ML frameworks. AI is central to our future and you will lead it
- Strong API design and integration experience (REST or GraphQL)
- Proven ability to build and scale consumer-facing products
- Sound judgement on when to stabilise inherited code versus rebuild
- Understanding of UK data protection (UK GDPR) and secure, compliant data handling
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Valued
- Customer-facing features: reviews, reminders, gamification, geolocation, payments
- DevOps: Docker, CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, monitoring and error reporting
- Experience in food service, compliance, or regulated industries
As a person
- A genuine believer in the mission, comfortable with the ambiguity and pace of an early-stage startup
- Strong leadership, judgement, and communication
- Driven to build something that lasts and to do it properly
Compensation & Equity — Full Transparency
This is currently an equity-based role with no salary at this stage, as the company is pre-funding.
- Equity: 2%–5%, depending on experience and commitment (revisable as the company grows)
- A market salary is introduced once funding is secured — you'd be first in line
- Equity vests over a standard schedule, protecting both sides
- A genuine opportunity for a meaningful founding-level stake with real upside
We're honest about the trade-off: you're backing the vision and taking equity instead of near-term cash. In return you get real ownership, real influence, and real reward if we succeed together.
How to Apply
If you're excited to take a built-but-unpolished platform and make it world-class — and to lead the technology of a company with serious ambition — we'd love to hear from you.
Please submit your CV, a short note on why this excites you, and your answers to the application questions.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills
Location