Founding CTO
Hyphen Connect
Job Overview
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Job Description
About Hyphen Connect
We are supporting a venture-backed, early-stage technology company building a white-label consumer engagement and rewards platform for global brands. The platform enables large-scale fan and customer experiences (e.g. predictions, quests, digital rewards, ticketing and commerce) while incorporating tokenised settlement and rewards infrastructure.
This Founding CTO role represents a true greenfield build. The Founding CTO will define the overall system architecture, technical standards, and engineering culture from day one, while delivering a production-grade platform designed to scale to millions of users.
As Founding CTO, you will take end-to-end ownership of the technology organisation, from initial architecture and hands-on development through to team build-out and long-term technical strategy.
You will work closely with founders and commercial stakeholders, translating product vision into scalable systems and ensuring the platform can support multiple partners, brands, and regions.
Responsibilities
- Platform & architecture
- Define and build the core platform architecture supporting engagement mechanics, rewards, commerce, and analytics
- Establish system design principles covering scalability, security, and performance
- Make key build-vs-buy decisions and select vendors, tooling, and infrastructure partners
- Backend & infrastructure
- Architect and implement backend services supporting real-time event ingestion, points/wallet systems, identity, and compliance controls
- Design robust data pipelines, storage, and API layers
- Own production readiness, including monitoring, alerting, SLOs, and incident response processes
- Consumer products
- Oversee development of mobile (iOS/Android) and web applications delivered under partner branding
- Ensure high-quality user experience across consumer touchpoints
- Token & rewards infrastructure
- Lead design and integration of tokenised reward systems, including smart contracts and distribution logic
- Manage wallet integrations and fiat on/off-ramps in collaboration with external providers
- Integrations
- Build and maintain APIs connecting to external data feeds, ticketing systems, commerce platforms, and sponsor tools
- Leadership & team
- Hire, mentor, and scale a high-performing engineering team
- Establish engineering standards, documentation practices, and development workflows
- Act as a hands-on technical leader while progressively transitioning to strategic oversight
Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience building consumer-facing technology products
- Proven experience delivering at least one 0-to-1 platform
- Track record of shipping and operating products at scale (100K+ users)
- Strong backend engineering background (distributed systems, real-time data, API design)
- Experience designing production-grade systems with high reliability requirements
- Comfortable working across frontend, backend, and infrastructure layers
- Strong written and verbal communication skills (architecture docs, technical strategy, roadmap planning)
Strongly Preferred
- Experience with loyalty, gaming, or marketplace-style mechanics (e.g. rewards, auctions, prediction-style systems)
- Familiarity with blockchain or tokenised systems (smart contracts, wallets, settlement flows)
- Background in security-sensitive or compliance-aware systems
- Experience building white-label or multi-tenant platforms
Technical environment (current / planned)
- Languages: TypeScript/JavaScript, Node.js, Python; Go or Rust exposure is a plus
- Mobile: React Native or Flutter; native iOS (Swift) / Android (Kotlin) experience advantageous
- Infrastructure: Cloud-native (GCP), Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines
- Data: PostgreSQL, Redis, event streaming (Kafka or equivalent)
- Web3 exposure: Solidity fundamentals, wallet integrations, token mechanics
Key skills/competency
- Platform Architecture
- Backend Engineering
- Distributed Systems
- Real-time Data Processing
- API Design
- Mobile Development
- Tokenized Systems
- Smart Contracts
- Engineering Leadership
- Scalability
How to Get Hired at Hyphen Connect
- Research Hyphen Connect's vision: Study their mission, brand engagement focus, and platform goals to align your application.
- Tailor your CTO resume: Highlight your experience in 0-to-1 platform builds, scaling consumer products, and leading engineering teams.
- Showcase architectural prowess: Be prepared to discuss system design, scalability principles, security protocols, and build-vs-buy decisions in depth.
- Emphasize Web3/blockchain familiarity: Demonstrate understanding of tokenized systems, smart contracts, wallet integrations, and settlement flows.
- Articulate leadership philosophy: Be ready to discuss team building, mentoring, establishing engineering standards, and transitioning from hands-on to strategic oversight.
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