Lavendo - Founding CTO – AI Legal Tech (SF Bay Area)
Requirements
• Must-Haves: • 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 • Nice-to-Haves: • Exposure to legal tech, compliance-heavy, or regulated-industry products • Experience with document automation platforms • Prior founding experience or early employee (1–50 person company) • Background at Big Tech or high-growth SaaS • Genuine interest in access to justice and modernizing legal services • Key Success Drivers • Key Success Drivers • Builder-first — you ship fast, don't wait for perfect conditions, and take pride in what you launch • Builder-first • Full ownership — you treat the product and team like they're yours, because they will be • Full ownership • Systems thinker — you design for agentic workflows and automation, not just feature lists • Systems thinker • Ambiguity-tolerant — you thrive in 0→1 environments without a defined playbook • Ambiguity-tolerant • Mission-aligned — you're genuinely excited about AI's role in transforming legal services • Mission-aligned • Speed over perfection — you iterate fast, learn faster, and course-correct in real time • Speed over perfection
Responsibilities
• 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
Benefits
• Estimated Comp $160K – $220K • 7% – 10% • Upload your resume here to autofill key application fields. • Drop your resume here! • Parsing your resume. Autofilling key fields... • or drag and drop here • Please provide your country/state of tax residency. This information is required for proper tax withholding and compliance. • What aspects of your background do you believe make you a strong fit for this role? • Decline to self-identify • Hispanic or Latino - A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. • Hispanic or Latino • White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. • White • Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. • Black or African American • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander • Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. • Asian • American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment. • American Indian or Alaska Native • Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) - All persons who identify with more than one of the above five races. • Two or More Races • Hispanic or Latino • White (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) • American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) • I identify as one or more of the classifications of protected veteran listed above • I am not a protected veteran
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