[Hiring] Founding CTO / AI Engineer @IRIS OS

Role Description

We're looking for a Founding CTO to lead the technical build of IRIS, shape product and architecture from day one, and grow the engineering team as the company scales.

• Translate real-world network behaviour into structured data and intelligent, AI-driven workflows.
• Own the product architecture from MVP to scale across email, WhatsApp, phone and web, on a secure, serverless cloud foundation.
• Design AI systems with a strong focus on safety, fairness, privacy and transparency, ensuring recommendations and matching logic are responsible, explainable and free from harmful bias.
• Implement best practices for AI governance, model evaluation and responsible data usage as the platform scales.
• Understand user requirements and work with the CEO to build the technical strategy and roadmap.
• Be hands on and build and lead the engineering team as the company grows.

Qualifications

• Strong AI engineering background, with hands-on experience building and scaling AI or data-driven products in production.
• Experience building trustworthy AI products, including model evaluation, bias mitigation, privacy-preserving systems and safe deployment practices.
• Deep technical familiarity with modern cloud and serverless infrastructure.
• Ability to move fast from zero to one with limited resources.
• Product-minded engineer who understands user behaviour and real-world workflows (you prioritise frictionless data capture over clunky UI layers).
• Comfortable with ambiguity and shaping technical direction.
• Experience in the venture ecosystem is a strong advantage.
• Willing to work close to European hours.

Benefits

• Build a product that meaningfully changes who gets funded.
• Shape a new category of AI product, one that lives where people already work and acts on their behalf, not behind another chat window.
• Founding equity, high ownership, real impact.
• Work directly with a founder who has built and raised VC capital before (Cellcraft, Series A in progress).
• Shape the technical and ethical foundations of the product from day one.

Company Description

IRIS is a deep tech relationship intelligence platform — the super-connected personal fundraising agent for ambitious female founders. We are a closed-loop AI system that predicts, optimises, and shapes how capital and opportunity flow to female founders across Europe. IRIS goes far beyond introductions: she manages timing, prepares both sides, tracks outcomes, and learns from every interaction to continuously improve future matches. We connect founders to the full funding spectrum — VCs, angels, grants, corporates, and accelerators — through intelligence, not proximity or luck. Operating across London, Cambridge, and Paris, IRIS is committed to one measurable outcome: 50 female founders close their funding rounds by end of 2027.