Founding CTO / Technical Lead (Fractional → Full-Time)

Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia - on-site / hybrid
We're building a local team and want to work as a team together, and to collaborate in person
as needed, so this role is for candidates in (or willing to relocate to / regularly commute to) the Halifax area.

- About the opportunity;

We're an early-stage, founder-owned Canadian SaaS startup building an AI-powered social-media
marketing and lead-generation platform. The product automates on-brand, compliant content and turns it into qualified leads, a space the current tools don't serve well.
The founder is looking for the most senior technical person: the owner of architecture and engineering, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the founder to turn the vision into a real, shippable product, and to build the team that ships it.
This starts as a fractional engagement (about 1 - 2 days/week) and is designed to convert to a full-time Head of Engineering / CTO role as we ramp. We're looking for a builder-leader, not an advisor.

*- What you'll own; *

• The technology architecture and the key build-vs-buy decisions (we'll lean on third-party APIs early, e.g., a unified social-posting layer, and bring things in-house as we scale).
• Our AI approach (model routing, retrieval, a qualifying chatbot, content generation) kept vendor flexible.
• Security and compliance posture; we handle users' social/CRM tokens and applicants' personal
data in any regulated industry.
• Hiring and managing a small engineering team (full-stack, integrations, AI), starting with helping us choose the first engineers/Product Design.
• Translating technical progress, risks, and costs into plain language for the founder.**

- What we're looking for;

• 8+ years building software, with production SaaS experience, you've shipped, not just prototyped.
• Took at least one product from zero to real users, ideally helped it scale.
• Full-stack + cloud architecture depth; comfortable with modern web stacks, databases, queues, and cloud infrastructure.
• Has hired and led engineers.
• Strong build-vs-buy and cost judgment; you know when to buy a managed service and when to build.
• Can explain technical trade-offs clearly to the owner (this is essential).
• Bonus: third-party API / OAuth integration experience, applied AI/LLM work, and exposure to fintech, finance, or other regulated/compliance-heavy products.

- Compensation; A Founding-team, skin-in-the-game package

This role is built for entrepreneur mind, who believes in their own ability, wants real ownership, skin-in-the-game, and is here to grow with the company, not for a salary. You come in on minimal cash and a founding-level equity stake, and both grow as you deliver and as we hit milestones.
• Equity, founding-level: ~5 - 10% of the company. This is your primary reward and where the real upside sits. You earn it through the process, performance, and milestones: 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff, plus tranches that unlock as you deliver agreed work on time and as we hit revenue/funding targets. The more you prove and the further we grow, the larger your stake becomes.
• Cash, minimal now, growing toward market. A minimal, commitment-level stipend while we're
pre-revenue, rising toward full senior-CTO market pay (in the range of ~$140,000 - $190,000/year equivalent) only as revenue and funding milestones are met, funded by the business, never ahead of what it can afford.
• The upside is real. We're building for the tens of thousands strong Canadian professional market, with room to expand into the much larger US market. We'll walk finalists through the full equity-value model under NDA, and any other legal documents.
• The exact equity figure, milestone triggers, vesting, and valuation are defined upfront with our lawyer and accountant before any offer.
• Built for the confident: the faster you deliver against clear, reasonable targets, the faster both your cash and your share climb.

*- Process; *

Intro call → Portfolio review → technical deep-dive → a short trial task (review our build plan under NDA and other legal documents, propose your architecture and approach) → references → offer.
Only strong believer’s candidates welcome it.