Missenden & Partners
Founding Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
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Founding Chief Technology Officer
Missenden & Partners is conducting a confidential search on behalf of an early-stage UK AI SaaS company for a Founding Chief Technology Officer.
The business is currently pre-launch and preparing for its first funding round. We are looking for a genuinely hands-on technical leader to join at the beginning, take ownership of the technology and help build the company from zero to one.
This is not a traditional corporate CTO role.
The successful candidate will work directly with the founder to define the technical architecture, build the first commercial product and, following funding, recruit and lead the initial engineering team.
The product applies AI to complex, document-heavy B2B workflows and has a clearly defined initial UK market.
Salary: £120,000 + meaningful equity/options
Location: London / Hybrid
Start: Following completion of the current funding round
The role
You will own the technical direction of the business from its earliest stage, including:
- Designing the technical architecture and engineering strategy
- Leading development of the first commercial product
- Building and implementing AI/LLM-powered functionality
- Developing document ingestion, extraction, search and retrieval systems
- Designing backend infrastructure, APIs, databases and integrations
- Making pragmatic decisions around models, infrastructure, security and scalability
- Working closely with the founder on product strategy and roadmap
- Recruiting and leading the first engineering hires
- Establishing the engineering culture and development processes as the company grows
This will initially be a very hands-on position. We are looking for someone who is as comfortable building and shipping as they are leading.
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Proven zero-to-one experience is essential
This is a key requirement for the role.
We are specifically looking for someone who has previously played a material role in taking a technology product from an early concept through development and into the hands of real users or paying customers.
Candidates should be able to demonstrate:
- Products they have personally helped architect and build
- Their specific contribution to those products
- How the product was taken from concept to launch
- The technical decisions and challenges they personally owned
- What happened once the product reached the market
- Evidence of customer, user or commercial outcomes
Shortlisted candidates will be asked to walk us through previous products they have built and launched, and references will form an important part of the final selection process.
We are far more interested in what you have actually built and shipped than impressive job titles alone.
What we’re looking for
You will ideally have strong practical experience in:
- Building AI/LLM-powered products in production
- Modern SaaS architecture
- Backend engineering and cloud infrastructure
- RAG, retrieval, structured extraction and document processing
- APIs, databases, integrations and data pipelines
- Taking software products from concept through MVP to live customers
- Making sensible technical trade-offs in an early-stage environment
- Security, data protection and scalable architecture
- Recruiting and mentoring engineers
Previous experience as a founder, founding engineer, CTO, technical lead, principal engineer or senior engineer within an early-stage technology company would be particularly relevant.
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Experience within B2B SaaS, workflow software, procurement, construction technology or other document-intensive industries would be useful, but specific sector experience is not essential.
The person
We are looking for someone who is:
- Technically excellent and genuinely hands-on
- Commercially minded
- Pragmatic rather than precious
- Comfortable operating with ambiguity
- Able to move quickly without cutting irresponsible corners
- Low ego and high ownership
- Capable of explaining complex technology clearly
- Comfortable challenging assumptions and contributing to product decisions
- Excited by the prospect of building a company rather than simply joining one
You do not need to have managed a huge engineering organisation.
In fact, someone who has spent recent years personally building, launching and improving products may be a much better fit.
The opportunity
This is an opportunity to join a company at the point where the most important technical decisions are still to be made.
The Founding CTO will have significant influence over the product, architecture, engineering team and future technical direction of the business.
The package includes a £120,000 salary plus meaningful equity/options, subject to final terms.
The appointment and start date are conditional upon completion of the company’s current funding round.
Due to the confidential nature of the search, further information about the company, product and founder will be shared with suitable candidates during the process.
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