Founding Engineer — Path to CTO

Ponce is building the technology platform for personalized aesthetics. Today, decisions about skincare and aesthetic treatments are often subjective, fragmented, and difficult to understand. Ponce helps providers and patients use facial analysis, structured treatment planning, and longitudinal data to make aesthetics more personalized, predictable, and understandable.

Our platform includes AI-assisted facial photo analysis, provider-facing software, patient applications, personalized treatment plans, and progress tracking.

We are already a revenue-generating company and are proud to be default alive. We have paying customers, a product in active use, and a business that does not depend on the next financing round to continue operating.

At the same time, we are still early enough for one exceptional engineer to shape the product, technical architecture, engineering culture, and direction of the company.

We are looking for a founding engineer to take ownership of the technical side of Ponce and grow into our Head of Engineering or CTO.

The role

This is not a conventional engineering position where you will receive a detailed backlog and implement predefined tickets.

You will work directly with the founder to understand our customers, company priorities, and product opportunities. You will help determine what should be built, develop the technical approach, make the necessary tradeoffs, and own delivery through production.

You will be responsible for the entire technical stack, including:

• Our provider-facing application
• Patient applications and treatment plans
• Backend services, APIs, data systems, and integrations
• Infrastructure, deployments, monitoring, security, and reliability
• Our facial photo-analysis and machine-learning capabilities
• Internal tools and operational systems

Our AI and machine-learning capabilities are an important part of the product, but this is not a specialized AI research or computer-vision role. The broader challenge is building a reliable, intuitive, and scalable software platform around real provider and patient workflows.

What ownership means here

We are looking for someone who takes responsibility for outcomes, not only implementation.

You should be able to:

• Understand the customer and business objective before selecting a technical solution
• Turn ambiguous goals into a practical plan
• Identify important problems without waiting for them to be assigned
• Make sound decisions about scope, architecture, and sequencing
• Own systems through development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and improvement
• Work directly with customers and translate feedback into product decisions
• Balance speed with platform stability, security, and product quality
• Communicate risks and tradeoffs clearly
• Coordinate contractors or specialists when appropriate
• Help build the technical foundation and future engineering team

You will have substantial autonomy, along with responsibility for the quality and reliability of what we deliver.

What you may work on

Examples include:

• Improving how providers evaluate patients and create treatment plans
• Building intuitive patient-facing reports and experiences
• Strengthening automated testing and deployment processes
• Improving production monitoring, logging, error detection, and reliability
• Expanding our facial photo-analysis capabilities
• Building longitudinal progress tracking
• Integrating external models, APIs, and healthcare systems
• Improving security, privacy, and data governance
• Translating customer needs into new product capabilities
• Determining when to build proprietary technology and when to use external tools

Our current stack includes TypeScript, React, Node.js, Python, GCP, OpenCV, MediaPipe, and GPU-based inference.

We also use AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude, and Codex as part of our daily workflow. We expect you to use these tools thoughtfully to move faster and improve the quality of what you ship.

Who we are looking for

You may be a strong fit if you have experience as:

• A former technical founder
• An early engineer at a seed-stage company
• A full-stack product engineer who became a technical lead
• An independent builder who has launched meaningful products
• A customer-facing engineer who owned solutions end to end

More broadly, you should:

• Be comfortable across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and product decisions
• Have built and shipped meaningful products independently
• Be able to operate without detailed specifications or extensive process
• Care about testing, reliability, security, and product quality
• Be comfortable working directly with customers
• Have a working understanding of machine learning and an interest in developing that capability
• Want to remain hands-on while taking increasing technical leadership
• Be motivated by ownership, impact, and company-building

Experience in aesthetics, skincare, or healthcare is helpful but not required. Curiosity about the customer and willingness to understand the domain are required.

We care more about what you have personally owned and delivered than your formal title, educational background, or the prestige of your previous employers.

Path to CTO

The goal is for this person to become Ponce’s Head of Engineering and ultimately CTO as the company grows and as they demonstrate the ability to own and deliver our technical capabilities.

This path will be based on execution, judgment, leadership, and trust—not tenure alone.

Over time, the role may expand to include ownership of:

• Technical strategy and architecture
• Product and engineering delivery
• Platform reliability, security, and technical risk
• Engineering hiring and team development
• Technical planning and resource allocation
• External technical partners
• Technical communication with customers, partners, and investors

How we work

• The role is remote
• We meet in person quarterly for focused working sessions
• You will work directly with the founder
• You will have direct access to customers and domain experts
• You will participate in product and company decisions
• We value ownership, speed, direct communication, intellectual honesty, and accountability
• We prefer practical solutions and customer learning over unnecessary process

Interview process

Introductory conversation — 30 minutes

We will discuss what you have built, what you personally owned, and what you are looking for in your next role.

Product and technical discussion — 60 minutes

We will walk through the Ponce platform and discuss how you would approach real product and technical challenges.

Live working session — 60 minutes

We will work together on a representative problem. You may use the development tools you normally work with, including Cursor, Claude, or Codex.

Paid trial project — optional

For some finalists, we may complete a small, clearly scoped paid project so both sides can evaluate what it is like to work together.

Apply

Please include:

• A link to something meaningful you have built
• A brief explanation of what you personally owned
• A short note about why this opportunity interests you
• Your availability and timezone