DevJobs

Founding CTO

Overview
Skills
  • Agentic architectures
  • Distributed services
  • LLMs
  • Stateful architectures
  • Systems engineering
  • Simulation
  • World models

Founding CTO (0→1)

We’re building a new layer of intelligence that sits between data and decisions, between models and action — a foundational shift in how intelligent systems reason, plan, and operate across time, context, and uncertainty.

The platform enables agentic systems to think ahead and carry decisions into the real world, with a focus on decision-driven commerce and real-world execution.

This is a founding, co-creator role. You’ll join at the earliest stage, shaping the technical foundations, primitives, and architecture — and building the first real systems yourself.


What You’ll Own

  • Technical vision & system architecture

Define the core architecture from first principles: system primitives, state, decision flows, memory, orchestration, and foundations that compound over time.

  • Agentic systems (hands-on)

Build the first agentic loops yourself — reasoning, planning, tool use, memory, multi-step execution, and stateful behavior over time.

  • World models & simulation (when useful)

Design approaches for scenario evaluation, forecasting, and planning under uncertainty (including lightweight world-models/simulation where it creates leverage).

  • Evaluation, reliability, and guardrails

Establish how we measure correctness, robustness, and failure modes (offline/online eval, red-teaming, monitoring, iteration loops).

  • Founder-level partnership

Work directly with the founders as a true thought partner, shaping what gets built, why it matters, and how the platform evolves.

  • 0→1 translation

Turn an early thesis into working systems through fast iteration, experimentation, and architectural choices that age well.

  • Judgment under uncertainty

Make high-leverage decisions in ambiguous environments, balancing speed, rigor, and long-term flexibility.

  • Team formation

Build the initial engineering team and define what “great” looks like — technically and culturally.

  • External technical leadership

Be the technological face of the company with early partners, customers, and investors.

  • IP & defensibility

Lead the creation of a defensible IP portfolio, including core system designs and patentable innovations as the platform takes shape.


Technical Background:


  • Strong hands-on experience building complex, stateful systems that evolve over time.
  • Experience using LLMs as system components — including orchestration, tool

use, multi-step workflows, memory, evaluation, and real tradeoffs around latency, cost, and

reliability.

  • Deep interest or experience in agentic architectures: planning, decision-making, state tracking, and execution loops.
  • Experience or strong exposure to world models / simulation / scenario evaluation

(formal or pragmatic) — especially for planning under uncertainty.

  • Experience designing systems that operateunder uncertainty, partial observability, noisy inputs, and imperfect feedback.
  • Solid foundation in systems engineering: distributed services, stateful architectures, and data flows that manage growing complexity.
  • Familiarity with one or more application domains where agents must execute reliably (e.g. Physical AI / embodied systems)


How You Work

  • First-principles thinker who designs from fundamentals and challenges assumptions.
  • Comfortable operating at the earliest stages with open technical questions and evolving direction.
  • Strong technical judgment and architectural taste.
  • Founder-level ownership, accountability, and long-term commitment.


Why This Role:

  • Opportunity to co-create the technical foundations of a new category by building a new layer of intelligence between models and action.
  • Direct partnership with a founders deeply involved in product and system design.
  • Real hands-on building at the beginning, followed by team, platform, and ecosystem ownership.
  • Equity, influence, and responsibility aligned with true co-founder impact.

Cortica