Founding CTO / Technical Co-Founder

WeDecide · Early-stage / Pre-seed · Part-time to full-time · Remote

We are building the infrastructure for responsive governance.

WeDecide quantifies neighbourhood health. Residents track local conditions and the impact of policies on their household. WeDecide translates that engagement into a structured feedback loop for governments.

The role
We are looking for a technical co-founder. This person will own the technical architecture and delivery of a data-intensive civic application currently in MVP development, and will share responsibility for company strategy, fundraising, and partnership development alongside the founder.

The seat carries genuine technical authority and genuine commercial weight. You will make foundational architectural decisions, ship the platform from MVP to first public release, and represent the technology to investors, government partners, and prospective hires. This is a role for someone who wants to shape both the product and the company.

What you will own — technical
● Define and own the technical architecture across the web application, backend, data pipelines, and internal systems.
● Lead MVP delivery on the current stack: Next.js, React, TypeScript, and PostgreSQL / Supabase, with a modular API layer.
● Build a modular data integration layer connecting a large number of external public data sources across multiple jurisdictions.
● Design the platform so core product modules operate as interoperable services rather than a tightly coupled prototype.
● Establish engineering standards for reliability, observability, testing, deployment, and documentation from the outset.
● Own security architecture: encrypted data handling, anti-bot and abuse resistance, identity-related controls, and privacy-by-design.
● Prepare the platform for penetration testing, security review, and pilot readiness before any public deployment.
● Build for compliance requirements including GDPR, anonymisation, accessibility, and multi-market deployment constraints.
● Recruit and lead early engineering hires as the team expands.
What you will own — co-founder scope
● Partner with the founder on company strategy, product direction, and prioritisation under real constraints.
● Represent the technology to investors: contribute to the fundraising narrative, lead technical due diligence, and help close the round.
● Support partnership development with government, institutional, and delivery partners, including technical scoping of pilots.
● Bring your professional network to bear on hiring, fundraising, and business development.
● Set the engineering culture and the standards the company becomes known for.

Technical environment
Current stack
Next.js, React, TypeScript · PostgreSQL / Supabase · Inngest for scheduled data refresh, scoring, and background workflows · Mistral Voxtral for voice and audio processing of qualitative civic input · progressive web app delivered through Serwist service workers with Web Push (VAPID).
The platform is architected for multi-jurisdiction data integration and a secure government-facing interface. The path beyond the progressive web app — including any move to native mobile — is a decision this role will own.

Technical challenges
● Building a scalable integration layer across roughly 75 government and public data sources over time.
● Designing a system that supports daily data refresh, scoring logic, and synchronisation across devices.
● Handling anonymised qualitative and quantitative inputs in a way that preserves privacy while producing meaningful aggregate insight.
● Establishing trust controls in a politically sensitive environment: tamper-evident data provenance, authenticated messaging, bot resistance, and security hardening.
● Meeting accessibility requirements such as WCAG 2.2 AA alongside broader multi-market usability expectations.
What we are looking for
● Significant experience building and shipping software products, ideally 8+ years, with strong hands-on technical depth.
● Strong backend and systems architecture skills: APIs, external integrations, data models, and service design.
● Experience with modern JavaScript / TypeScript stacks; direct experience with Next.js, React, and PostgreSQL strongly preferred.
● Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, security, and technical delivery across complex projects.
● Experience designing for privacy, compliance, and secure data handling in products where trust is mission-critical.
● The judgement to move between product thinking and technical execution and to make clear trade-offs under ambiguity.
● Commercial instinct: comfort representing a company to investors and partners, and a network you are willing to bring to bear.
● Experience leading cross-functional delivery and, ideally, hiring or managing small engineering teams.

Nice to have
● Silicon Valley connections
● Public sector, GovTech, civic systems, or other regulated data environments.
● PostGIS, legislative or open-data APIs, and data pipeline architecture.
● Accessibility, internationalisation, and multi-region deployment.
● ML, scoring systems, or analytics-heavy products.
● Prior founder or early-stage experience, including exposure to fundraising.

Compensation and equity
This is a co-founder-level appointment. Compensation is equity-weighted and reflects founding status, with cash compensation calibrated to the stage and confirmed on close of the pre-seed round.

Why this role
This is a high-ownership seat with architectural and commercial leverage. The person here will shape core infrastructure, engineering culture, product velocity, and the technical moat from the earliest stage. It suits someone who wants genuine authority, is comfortable operating with incomplete information, and is motivated by hard systems problems and real civic impact rather than polished corporate environments.

How to apply
Send your CV and portfolio and Linkedin to [email protected]
Detailed product and architecture materials are shared under a mutual non-disclosure agreement at a later stage of the process.

Allegra Grunberg — Founder & CEO, WeDecide Now Ltd — [email protected]