Founding CTO — Pre-Seed Mobility Technology Company

For Wellfound, I’d make it much more detailed than the LinkedIn post because candidates there are actively evaluating startup opportunities. Keep the company confidential initially, but make the opportunity credible and ambitious.

Founding CTO — Pre-Seed Mobility Technology Company

Location: Remote / International

Stage: Pre-Seed

Markets: Africa & Middle East → Global

Role: Founding CTO

Compensation: Meaningful equity + salary following financing

The Opportunity

We are supporting an ambitious mobility technology company currently entering its pre-seed stage.

The company is building a new technology platform around how people access, share, use and ultimately own vehicles, beginning across high-growth markets in Africa and the Middle East before expanding internationally.

This is not an idea-stage project.

The company has already completed significant product and market validation, built its initial technology, established early supply relationships, and is now preparing for launch and institutional pre-seed financing.

We are looking for an exceptional Founding CTO to take ownership of the technology organization and help build the company through its next stage.

The Role

This is not a traditional CTO position where you inherit an established engineering organization.

You will help build it.

You will work directly with the Founder and take ownership of the technical direction of the company as it moves from pre-seed through launch, scale and international expansion.

You will be responsible for:

• Owning the overall technology vision and architecture
• Evaluating and evolving the existing technology stack
• Building scalable marketplace infrastructure
• Leading backend, web and mobile engineering
• Building payment and financial infrastructure integrations
• Developing identity, verification, trust and risk systems
• Integrating insurance and protection infrastructure
• Building APIs and integrations with external mobility and automotive partners
• Establishing security, privacy and engineering standards
• Recruiting and leading the initial engineering organization
• Making pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions during the pre-seed stage
• Working closely with product, operations and commercial teams
• Supporting technical discussions with investors and strategic partners
• Building the technical foundation capable of supporting multiple countries and eventually millions of users

You should be equally comfortable discussing long-term architecture and getting directly involved when something needs to ship.

Who We're Looking For

We care significantly more about technical ability, judgment and ambition than whether you've previously held the title "CTO."

You may currently be a:

• Staff or Principal Engineer
• Senior Software Engineer
• Engineering Manager
• Senior Engineering Manager
• Head or Director of Engineering
• VP Engineering
• CTO
• Technical Founder

We are particularly interested in people who have worked within highly scaled technology environments involving:

Mobility

Ride-hailing, car sharing, automotive marketplaces, transportation or logistics.

Marketplaces

Two-sided marketplaces, supply/demand systems, reputation systems, search, pricing or marketplace infrastructure.

Fintech & Payments

Payment orchestration, wallets, payouts, KYC/KYB, fraud, financial infrastructure or payment platforms.

Trust & Risk

Identity, verification, insurance technology, fraud prevention, security or risk infrastructure.

Particularly Relevant Backgrounds

Experience at companies or environments comparable to:

Uber, Careem, Turo, Getaround, BlaBlaCar, Bolt, Airbnb, Amazon, Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Revolut and other high-scale marketplace, mobility or fintech platforms.

These companies are examples, not requirements.

Exceptional engineers from other backgrounds are strongly encouraged to reach out.

What Matters Most

We are looking for someone who:

• Has approximately 8+ years of strong software engineering experience or equivalent depth
• Has designed or contributed significantly to scalable production systems
• Understands modern cloud and distributed architectures
• Has strong backend and systems thinking
• Understands APIs, databases, infrastructure and security
• Can make architectural decisions without overengineering
• Has experience with or strong understanding of payments and marketplace systems
• Can recruit and lead excellent engineers
• Is comfortable operating with the speed and uncertainty of an early-stage company
• Has strong product judgment, not only engineering ability
• Thinks internationally from day one
• Wants meaningful ownership rather than simply another senior engineering position

Previous founder experience is a significant plus.

Mobility, marketplace or fintech experience is also a significant plus.

What You Would Be Joining

The company is currently at the pre-seed stage with early foundations already in place.

The Founder has been developing the business, product, commercial relationships and market strategy while preparing the company for institutional financing and launch.

The Founding CTO will therefore not be joining to validate whether a problem exists.

You will be joining to help turn an already-developed vision and early foundation into a highly scalable technology company.

Why This Is Interesting

Mobility remains fundamentally inefficient across many emerging markets.

Vehicle access is difficult.

Ownership is expensive.

Existing rental infrastructure remains fragmented.

Millions of vehicles remain underutilized.

And many of the technology models that transformed mobility in developed markets have still not been properly adapted to Africa and the Middle East.

The opportunity is to build infrastructure that connects these pieces rather than simply creating another rental application.

The ambition is large:

Build from the region. Scale globally.

Founder Mentality

We're looking for someone who thinks like an owner.

Someone who can look at an impossible technical or operational problem and figure out how to make it possible.

Someone willing to challenge assumptions.

Someone who can build with limited resources today while designing for enormous scale tomorrow.

Someone who wants their next chapter to be defined by what they built, not simply where they worked.

Compensation & Ownership

This is a founding-stage opportunity.

The structure includes meaningful equity participation, reflecting the importance of the Founding CTO role and the long-term commitment expected.

Cash compensation will scale with the company's financing and development.

Specific structure will be discussed directly with candidates based on experience, involvement and timing.

Process

Initial conversations will remain confidential.

Selected candidates will speak directly with the Founder and receive significantly more information about the company, product, traction, technology, financing strategy and long-term vision.

If you're an exceptional technical builder who has been waiting for the right opportunity to build something from the beginning, we'd like to hear from you.