Founding CTO – AI Legal Tech

Lavendo

Founding CTO managing technical architecture and AI infrastructure for family law tech startup. Joining at an inflection point with real product and customers.

Posted 5/27/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorLead💰 $48,000 - $66,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudGoogle Cloud PlatformJavaScriptKubernetesNode.jsPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own and define end-to-end technical architecture of the platform
Write and ship production code daily alongside the founding team
Architect and scale AI agent infrastructure for legal workflows — billing, financial layers, document automation, collections, and client collaboration
Build and scale the engineering team from scratch — hiring, mentoring, and establishing culture
Partner with founders on product roadmap, fundraising narrative, and company strategy
Ensure security, compliance, and scalability of a document-heavy, regulated-industry platform
Drive rapid iteration cycles and maintain startup velocity through seed close and beyond

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years of software engineering experience, with 3–5+ years in technical leadership
Deeply hands-on — you still write and ship production code regularly
Proven experience building AI-native, workflow-heavy, or document-centric SaaS products
Proficiency with modern AI/ML stacks: LLMs, RAG, and agentic frameworks (LangChain/LangGraph, OpenAI/Claude APIs)
Strong backend and cloud infrastructure expertise (GCP/AWS, Python, Node.js, Kubernetes)
Experience building engineering teams in a 0→1 environment
Based in the SF Bay Area or willing to relocate
Financially comfortable with a founder salary model during the build phase — equity is the upside

Benefits

Comp & perks

8-10% founder-level equity — significantly above market, reflecting a true founding relationship
Base salary: ~$4,000/month during the pre-seed phase, with a clear normalization trigger post-seed close
Upside is entirely equity-driven, structured for long-term wealth creation

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Hard Skills & Tools

software engineeringtechnical leadershipAI-native productsworkflow-heavy productsdocument-centric SaaSAI/ML stacksLLMsRAGLangChainOpenAI APIs

Soft Skills

mentoringteam buildingculture establishmentstrategic partnershiprapid iterationstartup velocity