**About Us**
There are 4 billion home cooks in the world. 200 million in the US alone. They
are consuming recipes from fragmented sources, both digital and analog (books,
blogs, social apps). There’s no one place to keep them organized, keep notes
on them, share them, and collaborate on meal plans with them.
Meanwhile, recipe creators are cobbling together publishing, monetization, and
growth from different platforms: publishing & monetization on ad-driven blogs
on one side, and growth algorithms from social apps like Pinterest on the
other. It works to a degree, but is frustrating for both cooks and recipe
creators alike. Traditional publishers don’t participate in this burgeoning
ecosystem at all.
**Cookable** is a 3-sided social marketplace that creates a cook-centered,
recipe-specific discovery, collection and sharing experience for home cooks;
publishing, monetization, and AI-driven growth engine for creators; and opens
the door for traditional cookbook publishers to participate in this digital
ecosystem and drive new revenue from their backlist.
We’re building what will become the de facto online destination for
collecting, sharing, and discovering recipes.
We are:
* An experienced product exec with UX and strategy superpowers
* A creative publishing exec with deep contacts and experience in cookbooks
* An empathy-driven product designer who writes frontend code
We’re pre-product and pre-funding but are actively working on the publisher
content partnerships needed to enable our vision. We’re looking for a hands-
on, founding CTO to join us. Your first job will be to build preliminary
product and help us achieve our next milestone: pre-seed funding.
**Role Overview**
As the hands-on founding CTO, you will be a core member of the leadership
team, responsible for shaping and executing the company’s technology vision
from the ground up. You will architect scalable consumer-facing products,
build and lead an engineering team, and work closely with other founders (and
the broader business as it grows) to align technology with business goals.
This role requires a blend of technical excellence, strategic thinking,
business acumen, and a willingness to be deeply involved in day-to-day
development, especially in the early stages.
**Key Responsibilities**
* Define and execute the technical vision and strategy to support the company’s business objectives and growth plans.
* Architect, build, and iterate on the core consumer product, working hands-on across the stack to deliver a high-quality, scalable, and secure solution.
* Select and implement the technology stack, infrastructure, and development processes best suited for rapid prototyping and future scaling.
* Collaborate closely with co-founders (product / design / business) to translate vision and requirements into efficient, scalable, delightful product.
* Recruit, mentor, and manage a high-performing engineering team; establish a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.
* Conduct code reviews, enforce best practices, and ensure robust testing and deployment processes to accelerate time-to-market and minimize regressions.
* Oversee data security, privacy, and compliance, ensuring the platform meets regulatory and industry standards.
* Represent the company’s technology vision to investors, partners, and at industry events; act as a technical evangelist and thought leader.
* Monitor emerging technologies and industry trends, integrating innovative solutions to maintain a competitive edge.
* Manage technical debt, cloud infrastructure, and technology spending to optimize for cost and performance.
**Ideal Candidate Profile**
* Proven hands-on experience building and scaling consumer-facing tech products, ideally as a technical founder or early engineering leader; you’re comfortable starting from nothing and creating the needed infrastructure and frameworks as you build.
* Deep expertise in modern software engineering (full-stack development: JavaScript / Go / C#, cloud services, DevOps, agile methodologies).
* Strong drive to leverage AI to get things done based on pragmatic analysis; you find ways to do the least work for the biggest result (always prioritizing customer experience)
* Demonstrated ability to recruit, lead, and mentor technical teams in a fast-paced but collaborative, high-growth environment.
* Strong communication skills, able to translate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and inspire both internal and external audiences.
* Strategic thinker with a bias for action, comfortable making high-stakes decisions and adapting to new learnings or changing priorities.
* Comfortable talking to partners (publishers) in both a partner development (sales) and partner management (service) capacity
* Passion for creating real customer & partner value, clean user experience, and delighting users.
**Working Conditions**
This is a remote position. We are currently located in or near Portland,
Oregon and the San Francisco Bay Area.
_Compensation is equity only until we hit funding milestones._
**What We Offer**
* Co-founder equity and a pivotal role in shaping the direction of the company.
* The opportunity to build a category-defining consumer tech product from the ground up.
* Autonomy, influence, and the chance to work alongside a driven, visionary founding team.