Technical Co-founder

About the Startup

SearchLens is a B2B compliance intelligence platform for digital-native EU SMBs. They make up 99.8% of the market, yet the existing solutions (lawyer/consultant, enterprise tool) are too expensive for them and not built for their needs. As of now, the rule-based regulations that are operationalized on the web app include GDPR and the EU AI Act, with operationalized country-level derogations for Spain, Ireland, and Germany, but the longer-term vision is to create an autonomous agentic layer to autopilot the entire compliance cycle, from managing data day to day and security/continuous monitoring to filing and auditing. To scale this, the plan is to add country-level derogations for all 27 EU member states and add reguations for other highly reguluated industries - namely healthcare and finance - and from there look to expand to SMBs in other regions.

As of now, SearchLens is a team of 1 (Dakota - founder). I've validated the problem, built a live product, and started partner conversations, but I'm at the stage where the right network, mentorship, and accountability structure would accelerate everything. In a market where everyone is battling to be first movers in the AI agent space, the goal is to move this as fast as possible while doing it responsibly.

Must-haves:

Strong NLP and LLM experience: building production pipelines around language models, not just prompting. RAG, prompt engineering at a systems level, and AI agents that take actions based on document analysis

Full-stack JavaScript/TypeScript proficiency: our stack is Next.js, Supabase, and Anthropic API

Security architecture expertise: data encryption at rest and in transit, access controls, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 readiness, tenant data isolation. This needs to be designed in from day one, not bolted on later

Comfort building in a regulated domain: the kind of person who reads a regulation and thinks "how do I model this as a system" rather than getting overwhelmed by legal language (or is highly motivated to learn and will embrace the discomfort)

Believes AI in regulated industries should be built responsibly: the whole thesis of SearchLens is that compliance matters, and the Co-founder needs to actually believe that as well.

Full-time commitment, and close to CET timezone (Madrid, Paris, etc.) so that we can at least have some overlap.

Strong-to-haves:

Prior experience in legaltech, regtech, compliance tooling, fintech or healthtech: any domain where software touches sensitive data and regulatory requirements

B2B eperience building document processing pipelines, contract analysis tools, or compliance automation

Multi-tenant SaaS architecture experience: supporting multiple companies each with their own data, jurisdictions, and compliance states

Familiarity with EU data residency requirements, or willingness to ramp quickly on this: where data can and can't be stored, cross-border data flows, GDPR compliance at the infrastructure level

Comfortable with ambiguity: the AI Act isn't fully enforced yet, and GDPR interpretations shift with each new ruling. Agentic AI is also still more problematic than helpful. Sees that as an opportunity to build adaptive systems, not a reason to wait

Values alignment — the non-technical stuff that matters equally

Cares about the why behind what SearchLens stands for, not just the engineering challenge: We're building infrastructure that protects people's privacy rights. If that doesn't resonate, this isn't the right fit. This isn't a "world views must match" or virtue signatling type of situation, it's about treating people with respect in our highly digital world: in the B2B world, I believe that's part of how you take care of your customers.

Long-term thinker: Willing to build things correctly even when there's a faster shortcut, because in compliance, cutting corners creates liability for customers

Treats the co-founder relationship seriously: I'm not looking for an employee or a contractor, I'm looking for someone who wants equal ownership and accountability in building this company

Open to being honest and being challenged: I want a co-founder who pushes back on my ideas when they disagree, not someone who just executes. Honesty in this type of relationship means respect for each other. Ultimately I'm looking for a true business partner so we can learn and grow together.

Barcelona based, or willingness to relocate (there is an easy way to secure a visa for this scenario if that's a concern). Obviously being able to work in person together is ideal, but it's not a hard requirement - work can be done remotely.