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Founding CTO - Job application

About the Opportunity

We are building a mobile-first consumer platform that connects buyers and sellers through a

modern, social, and highly visual shopping experience including real-time video, in-app messaging, and secure digital payments

The product has been in active development for several months: a full web application is live in a pre-launch state, with a substantial backend already built and functioning.

What is missing is a technical co-founder to take ownership of the engineering

function, close the gap to a public launch, and build the team that will scale it afterward.

This is not a "validate the idea from scratch" role.

The core product exists, has real infrastructure behind it, and is weeks away from its first public release.

We are looking for someone who wants to walk into a live, working codebase and turn it into a company.

Why This Role Exists

The founder has driven the product to this point personally, working closely with AI-assisted

engineering tools to design and build the majority of the current system.

That approach has reached

its natural ceiling the platform now needs a hands-on technical leader who can independently own architecture decisions, harden what has been built, lead a public launch,

and — critically — recruit and manage the engineers who will come after.

What You'll Own

Launch ownership: Take the existing pre-launch platform across the finish line to a public

Minimum Viable Product by December 2026-January 2027, and own every technical decision required to get there safely.

Payments & financial integrity: Finish hardening an already-integrated card payment and

escrow system — inline checkout, webhook-verified payment confirmation, seller payout

holding/release logic, and the tax-calculation logic behind it.

Native mobile delivery: Lead the build of the first native iOS and Android applications on top of an already-complete backend API layer, using a shared cross-platform framework.
Platform hardening: Audit and stabilize existing modules for checkout, live video/broadcast

functionality, real-time chat/communities, and the item/listing pipeline.

ensuring each is production-ready, not just feature-complete.

Notifications & growth infrastructure: Stand up push/in-app notification infrastructure,

analytics and event tracking, and attribution tagging ahead of the first user cohorts.

Security & operational readiness: Own environment/secrets management, database backup and point-in-time recovery, rate limiting, and monitoring/error tracking before real money and real users are on the platform.
Engineering culture & hiring: Define how engineering work gets done here, then recruit,

onboard, and manage the first engineers who join under you starting with a mobile-focused

hire and expanding from there.

Technical roadmap & vendor decisions: Own build-vs-buy calls (payment processors,

messaging/streaming infrastructure, SMS/notification providers, shipping/logistics integrations) and be the final technical authority in the company.

What We're Looking For

Proven experience shipping and operating a consumer-facing product end-to-end

ideally something transactional (payments, marketplace, fintech, or similar), not just internal tools.

Strong full-stack fluency with a modern JavaScript/TypeScript web framework, relational

databases, and API design. comfortable reading and reasoning about an existing codebase of meaningful size (hundreds of files, dozens of database tables and API routes).

Experience shipping native or cross-platform mobile apps (iOS + Android) from an existing

backend, including app store submission and release management.

Working knowledge of online payment integrations, webhook-based confirmation flows, and the operational discipline required around real money (idempotency, reconciliation, fraud basics).

Comfort operating with modern AI-assisted development tools as a force multiplier.

this team already builds this way, and it is expected to continue.

A track record of making pragmatic build-now-fix-later calls appropriate for a pre-launch

startup, balanced against genuine security and financial-integrity non-negotiables.

First-time or repeat founder energy: comfortable with ambiguity, comfortable owning outcomes without a large team underneath you on day one, and genuinely excited to build that team over

time.

Based in Riyadh, or willing to work substantially from any City with regular meetups with CEO.