Technical Co-Founder / CTO

Job Description: Technical Co-Founder / CTO

Role: Technical Co-Founder / Chief Technology Officer (CTO), 4 day work week.

Location: Remote (initial) with occasional UK field trial travel. Hybrid to follow.

Equity: Significant Co-Founder Equity Stake + Post-Raise Salary (£90k–£110k)

Company: Stealth UK Defence Tech Startup

About the Company

Founded by a former commissioned officer with specialist domain experience in extreme environments, a veteran DefTech entrepreneur-in-residence, and the designer of a UK DefTech Series B flagship product. We are building a zero-cloud edge operating system for real-time biometric and environmental telemetry in extreme and contested environments. Having built and shipped a functional TRL 5 MVP, we have secured high-barrier field trial pipelines across UK defence and civilian industry end-users, with intent to expand internationally. We are now raising a £1.5M Pre-Seed round to scale our engineering architecture and team.

About The Role

As Technical Co-Founder & CTO, you will own the end-to-end technical roadmap, software architecture, and engineering execution. You will take our working TRL 5 edge prototype and scale it into an enterprise-ready, TRL 7+ air-gapped system deployed across defence and high-risk industrial environments.

About You

In addition to your deep technical knowledge, you are a highly motivated resilient individual who is comfortable working autonomously and at the edge of your ability. You are cheerful, but also direct and unafraid to work through challenges. The ideal candidate will grow in line with the company and their corresponding responsibilities. The ability to develop and maintain high trust relationships and willingness to attain or demonstrate security clearances are essential.

You must be able to work in the UK without sponsorship and obtain UK security clearances.

What You Will Do

• Own the Architecture: Lead the development of our air-gapped Android Native (Kotlin) edge platform, offline mesh networking protocols (LoRa/mesh), and sensor ingestion layers, and the development of AI enabled sensor information analysis and decision making for specialist end-users.

• Integrate C2 & Edge AI: Scale our native Cursor-on-Target (CoT) XML data export pipelines for ATAK/WinTAK C2 integration and oversee local AI models running on-device.

• Build the Tech Team: Recruit, lead, and mentor a world-class engineering team following our Pre-Seed round closure.

• Deploy in the Field: Participate in field trials alongside end-users with specialist defence and civilian organisations to iterate product features directly from operational feedback.

What We Are Looking For

• Deep Systems & Mobile Engineering: Proven track record in low-level sensor communications and local data management.

• Edge & Off-Grid Experience: Familiarity with tactical network architectures, LoRa, mesh networking, or existing defence C2 systems is a major advantage.

• High Execution Velocity: Ability to ship rapidly, embrace modern AI-assisted workflows, and solve complex problems under severe bandwidth/processing constraints.

• Mission Alignment: Motivated by building defensible software that protects personnel in extreme, high-hazard operations.

What Does Success Look Like?

• The First of Many: You have successfully set the tone for every other engineer to follow. You have shaped a flourishing enterprise delivering highly innovative tech solutions to the world’s most demanding customers.

• Personal Fulfillment: Because all work and no play makes everyone dull, you have brought your whole self to this team. Success looks like you’re deriving immense satisfaction from being CTO.

• Equity and Exit: Eventually, you’ll likely want to exploit this. Good. Your contribution has benefited thousands of end-users, and you’re ready for the next thing. That’s what’s success looks like too.

Onwards, together!

To Apply / Explore

If interested or to request a confidential intro, contact Jin Hyung at [email protected] with your CV and LinkedIn Profile.