You've been a 01 startup CTO (Rails). We're funded. Flexible title & time commitment.

Youve been a 01 startup CTO you write Rails andyou ship products (not people; not features).

If your last few years were management thats fine as long as you want to write Rails again.

The MVP is live. The stack is chosen. The CEO is technical. We have 2 additional X-CTOs. We want one more.

• Flexible Title: Can tailor to reflect your skills & experience.
• Flexible Time: Can do full-time part-time side-gig (off-hours) or fractional (contract).
• Flexible Commitment: Can do short-term long-term or intermittent.

Why so flexible Were a FUNDED startup racing to launch in 60 days. That gives us less than 2 months to stack features while raising additional working capital. Feel free to jump in help us ship then bounce >> or stick around. A successful launch translates into lots of permanent jobs for those that want them. Were also interested in long term side gig relationships if thats what youre into - in our experience a few expert hours often beat full-time learning-curve hours.

Were a credible funded remote-first startup led by a serial technical founder and backed by a 20-person team. The product is live in private alpha. The stack is Rails.

Learn more about the company at Learn more about the team at The Role

This is not a traditional software developer role. Were hiring product developers people we can hand a large initiative and trust to own the whole arc: figure out the requirements shape the UI/UX break the work into shippable chunks and deliver at AI pace.

You set the bar for how fast great product ships on Rails and you do it by being the person whos best at directing AI to multiply output. Working with AI is a lot like working with a brilliant but inexperienced junior: it can produce enormous volume but only if you know how to define the work decompose it into right-sized pieces and review output with a critical eye.

We deliberately do not have product managers on staff. Youll act as a technical product owner for your initiatives deciding what to build designing the experience delegating the build to AI (and collaborators) and reviewing the result for both correctness and solid engineering.

Up to $400000 max total compensation in Tier 1 cities; cash and equity components to be negotiated (amount reflects combined cash and equity components).

• Youve taken ownership of at least one meaningful initiative: you know the problem space the stakeholders and youre making scope and prioritization calls confidently
• Youre shipping production Rails features at a pace that makes the rest of the team recalibrate what fast means
• Youve established a personal workflow for AI-assisted development that demonstrably multiplies your output and youre sharing what works
• Youre decomposing initiatives into well-specified right-sized tickets that AI (and other developers) can execute against cleanly
• The code youre shipping and reviewing is clean well-tested and production-ready velocity without quality doesnt count

• Own initiatives end-to-end from ambiguous business problem to shipped product: research requirements UX judgment decomposition build and launch
• Ship features fast own the full cycle from stakeholder conversation to production deployment using AI tooling to maximize throughput
• Define and decompose work break large initiatives into well-specified right-sized tickets that serve as both alignment artifacts and AI prompts
• Decide what to build work directly with stakeholders (no PM intermediary); make scope calls; cut ruthlessly so what ships actually solves the problem
• Set the velocity standard demonstrate whats possible when a senior builder combines product judgment deep Rails expertise and disciplined AI-assisted workflows
• Review and elevate review PRs validate AI-generated output and raise the quality bar across the codebase
• Collaborate on architecture contribute to technical decisions on Rails PostgreSQL Redis Sidekiq and related infrastructure

• Youve been a 01 startup CTO you were the technical leader of a company at 01 (shipped product users revenue a raise or an exit). Not a title. The job you already did.
• You write Rails or you want to again youve built and shipped production Rails (PostgreSQL Redis Sidekiq Active Job etc.). If its been a while you want back in the codebase.
• Product instincts you genuinely enjoy figuring out what to build: talking to users/stakeholders unpacking requirements shaping UX and making calls about what to cut. Youve done this without a dedicated PM
• Proven AI-assisted development chops youre already using AI tooling (Cursor Copilot or similar) to ship meaningfully faster and you have opinions about what works and what doesnt
• The senior who makes juniors productive skillset you know how to specify work clearly enough that someone (or something) less experienced can execute it well. You give great direction catch issues early in review and dont waste cycles on rework
• Strong decomposition skills you can take a large ambiguous initiative and break it into concrete well-scoped pieces of work. You think in dependency trees not to-do lists
• Velocity as a value you care about shipping. You find ways to move fast without cutting corners. Youre allergic to unnecessary process and drawn to approaches that compress cycle time
• Comfort with startup ambiguity you thrive when things arent fully figured out and youre energized (not paralyzed) by the need to make decisions with incomplete information

• You still merge; or you miss it
• Background shipping marketplace SaaS or consumer-facing products end-to-end
• Familiarity with spec-driven workflows
• Experience integrating via APIs browser automation or Chrome extensions when clean integrations arent available
• Experience building or contributing to AI-augmented development workflows at an organizational level

• People looking for a managers chair this is a writing-Rails seat
• Staff / Principal ICs who have not been the 01 technical leader of a company
• Engineers who prefer well-groomed tickets handed down by a product manager
• Specialists who only want to write code and leave requirements UX and scope to someone else
• People who think AI-assisted means autocomplete not owning the full define decompose review loop