Associate to the CTO

About Bending Spoons

At Bending Spoons, we’re striving to build one of the all-time great companies. A company that serves a huge number of customers, where team members grow to their full potential, and that functions at unparalleled levels of effectiveness and efficiency. We aim to create extraordinary value for shareowners while adhering to high ethical standards.

Our strategy involves acquiring digital businesses with untapped potential and leveraging our platform—comprising our expertise, technologies, data, brand, talents, and company culture—to maximize their success. We then reinvest proceeds to strengthen our platform and acquire new businesses, combining an investor’s attention to capital allocation with an operator’s hands-on approach.

For a talented, driven, and collaborative individual, working at Bending Spoons offers an exceptional opportunity to learn, make a significant impact, and accelerate career progression.

The Role of Associate to the CTO

Our Technology team is central to our mission, building the systems, products, and infrastructure that power dozens of digital businesses serving millions of users worldwide. As part of our fast-track program for future engineering leads, you’ll join a world-class group of problem-solvers dedicated to creating technology of extraordinary quality and scale.

This Associate to the CTO position is open to individuals with an outstanding track record of excellence and growth, regardless of prior engineering-lead experience. After an intensive training period of six to twelve months, high-performing individuals will assume a technical leadership role—either as the sole leader or co-leader—of a business unit generating revenue in the tens of millions of dollars, with the potential to scale to hundreds of millions over time. You will report directly to our CTO.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive strategy: Develop and execute bold, data-informed strategies laser-focused on unlocking new levels of value for the company.
• Lead an outstanding team: Lead a high-performing team composed of some of the most talented professionals you’ll ever encounter. Make tough decisions when necessary to uphold excellence.
• Operate at the sharp end of the industry: Join one of the highest-rated employers in tech and finance, contributing to products with hundreds of millions of users, with a shared vision for greatness.
• Master your toolkit: Work across diverse tech stacks in a full-stack, end-to-end scope, refining your ability to choose the right tools for every challenge. From monolithic to microservices architectures, gRPC to REST APIs, Kubernetes to Docker, Python to Rust—demonstrate that true expertise lies in understanding purpose to unleash full potential.
• Simplify relentlessly: Turn complexity into simplicity. Whether optimizing CI/CD pipelines, writing maintainable code, or crafting minimalist architectures, your drive to simplify will power scalable, future-proof solutions.

What We Look For

• Leadership: You possess years of outstanding work experience in highly challenging roles and environments, demonstrating exceptional performance and outlier growth.
• Drive: You are extremely ambitious, with initiative, effort, and tenacity matching your ambition. You feel deeply responsible for your work and hold yourself to a high—and rising—bar.
• Reasoning ability: You can solve complex problems from first principles, structure ideas sharply, resist biases, and identify critical details.
• Team spirit: You give generously, support the best ideas, are happy to help your team, and are reliable, honest, and transparent.
• Proficiency in English: You read, write, and speak proficiently in English.

What We Offer

• An exceptional opportunity for growth: We hire individuals of outstanding potential and position them to thrive. Spooners in their 20s lead products worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and you’ll soon play an essential role in major projects.
• Incredibly talented, entrepreneurial teams: Work in small, result-oriented, autonomous teams alongside some of the brightest people in your field.
• All. These. Benefits: Flexible hours, remote working, unlimited backing for learning and training, top-of-the-market health insurance, a rich relocation package, generous parental support, and a yearly retreat to a stunning location. We help each Spooner set up the conditions to do their best work.
• Competitive pay and access to equity in the company: Annual salary tends to be between £151,436 and £250,512 in London, and €145,430 and €240,330 elsewhere in Europe for candidates with considerable experience. Compensation varies by location and expected impact, growing rapidly. Exceptional candidates may receive compensation beyond usual ranges. Permanent contract holders can receive pay in company equity at a discounted price, participating in value creation. Relocating to Italy may offer a 50% tax cut.

Commitment & Contract

Permanent or fixed-term. Full-time.

Location

Milan (Italy), London (UK), Madrid (Spain), Warsaw (Poland) or remote in selected countries.

The Selection Process

Our screening prioritizes verifiable signals of excellence, regardless of seniority. Don’t self-reject if you feel you lack experience or have an “imperfect” CV—apply if you like the role and believe you could excel. If you pass screening, you’ll complete one or more challenging tests that may involve unfamiliar problems and take several hours. We set a high bar and only extend offers when confident in finding the right candidate, which is why jobs may remain open for months.

We consider all applicants and provide reasonable accommodations for disabilities—please inform us via our form.

Before You Apply

If you’ve applied before and didn't receive an offer, we recommend waiting at least one year. Bending Spoons is a demanding environment, requiring significant commitment due to our ambition and high standards. This leads to extraordinary learning, achievement, and career growth.

To help you ramp up quickly, we recommend spending your first few months working from our Milan office, regardless of your long-term work location. This is the best way to absorb our culture and build trust. We offer generous travel and accommodation assistance. Afterward, you can work from our Milan or London offices, or remotely from approved countries, as agreed at the offer stage.

If the role speaks to you and you’re excited to give your best, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now!

Key skills/competency

• Technical Leadership
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Management
• System Architecture
• Problem Solving
• Software Development
• Scalability
• Data-informed Decision Making
• Process Optimization
• Full-stack Development