CTO / Late Founder - Sustainability Data Systems

Context

We are Sustaain, a data-for-sustainability startup building a sustainability intelligence platform for complex supply chains such as coffee and cocoa with an initial focus on data management for European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) compliance and risk management.

Over the next 6 months, we’re shipping production-grade compliance workflows: portal UX + APIs, traceability + geospatial services, auditability, and document ingestion & automation as a first-class module. This sits at the heart of the unified compliance operations vision we’re building with large commodity traders.

Role Overview

We are looking for a hands-on CTO / late founder to take our product from “working and selling” to production-grade and scalable, while building the engineering function.

This is a builder role first: you will architect, implement, and ship. But it is also a leadership role: you’ll set standards, drive a delivery rhythm, and hire/mentor the first engineering team. The Lead Engineer will report to you, and you will partner daily with product, science, and delivery to execute client commitments without compromising correctness and auditability.

Responsibilities

- Own the technical direction of the company: architecture, stack decisions, engineering standards, and long-term platform choices.
- Lead the development of our compliance platform: backend services, APIs, orchestration, security, observability, and production operations.
- Drive delivery from a technical standpoint: clear priorities, release planning, risk management, and production readiness (UAT, go-live, rollback).
- Build and maintain the core data and compliance services: traceability, geospatial services, audit trails, and evidence/document automation as needed.
- Establish “compliance-grade” engineering: deterministic where required, measurable quality, auditability, and explainability.
- Build the engineering team: hiring plan, mentorship, and a culture that ships reliably (tests, CI/CD, code review, monitoring).
- Collaborate with the leadership team on product roadmap and company strategy; translate business goals into execution plans.

6-Month Outcomes (what “good” looks like)

- A stable, monitored production platform with clear environments (DEV/INT/UAT/PROD), CI/CD, and operational runbooks.
- Core EUDR workflows shipped end-to-end (portal ↔ services ↔ integrations), with audit trails and reviewer-ready UX.
- A technical foundation that supports scale: data quality gates, performance baselines, and predictable delivery cadence.
- A team structure and engineering culture that can grow beyond the first delivery wave.

Required Skills & Experience

- Senior builder with **8+ years** experience shipping production systems end-to-end.
- Strong backend and systems engineering skills (Python is current; you can advocate change if you can ship faster/better).
- Experience designing and operating cloud-native systems (containers, CI/CD, monitoring, security).
- Strong product/delivery instincts: you can make trade-offs, cut scope, and still deliver what matters.
- Leadership ability: you can set direction, mentor, and recruit while staying hands-on.
- You care about correctness and accountability (this is compliance, not “move fast and break things”).

Nice-to-Have

- Experience with complex data platforms (geospatial, traceability, graph-like relationships, large-scale ingestion).
- Familiarity with regulated or audit-driven environments.
- Experience integrating enterprise systems (API/file/hybrid patterns, messy real-world constraints).

What We Offer

- A high-impact role: you’ll lead the build of a platform meant to become the operating system for compliance teams.
- Remote-first, flexible team rituals, and real ownership.
- Competitive compensation and equity (late founder).
- A company that values clarity over jargon, and delivery over theatre.

If you’re interested, share what you’ve shipped (resume and links welcome) and why it mattered to: [contact@sustaain.org](mailto:contact@sustaain.org) and get ready for no BS interviews followed shortly by hands-on integration in the team.