Founding CTO, AI Legal Tech (SF Bay Area)

Job description

Lavendo partners with startups and high‑growth companies to help them hire top‑tier sales, GTM, and technical talent. This role is with one of our clients; we’ll share full details about the company and interview process as we get to know you and confirm mutual fit. ABOUT THE COMPANY Our client is an early-stage, San Francisco-based AI startup building the operating system for family law. Their platform automates the most time-intensive parts of legal practice — client intake, financial disclosures, document preparation, case management, and client collaboration — helping family law firms modernize and scale without adding headcount. Founded in 2025, the company is already working with real customers and actively closing a seed round, with $XM signed to date. THE MISSION To reduce the emotional and financial burden of divorce for millions of families — and empower the legal professionals who serve them — by transforming a fragmented, manual process into a guided, intelligent, AI-driven experience. THE OPPORTUNITY This is a co-founder seat, not a hire. You're joining at the inflection point: real product, real customers, seed round closing. As the first technical leader, you'll own the full stack — architecture, AI infrastructure, engineering culture, and execution velocity. You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with the founding team to define how AI reshapes one of the largest, most underserved verticals in legal services. If you've been waiting for a founding opportunity where the market is real, the mission matters, and the equity is worth the bet — this is it. WHAT YOU'LL DO - 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 WHAT YOU BRING 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 - Builder-first — you ship fast, don't wait for perfect conditions, and take pride in what you launch - Full ownership — you treat the product and team like they're yours, because they will be - Systems thinker — you design for agentic workflows and automation, not just feature lists - Ambiguity-tolerant — you thrive in 0→1 environments without a defined playbook - Mission-aligned — you're genuinely excited about AI's role in transforming legal services - Speed over perfection — you iterate fast, learn faster, and course-correct in real time WHY JOIN? Compensation & Equity: - 7-10% founder-level equity — significantly above market, reflecting a true founding relationship - Base salary: ~$4,000/month during the pre-seed phase, with a clear normalization trigger post-seed close - Upside is entirely equity-driven, structured for long-term wealth creation What Makes This Rare: - Co-founder title and seat — not a VP/Director scope with imposed constraints - Real product traction and paying customers before you join - Seed round in progress: $XM already signed - Recognized by TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield and Stanford CodeX FutureLaw - Greenfield opportunity to define the technical foundation of a category-creating company INTERVIEWING PROCESS - Intro Call - Level 1 — Technical Deep-Dive - Level 2 — Take-Home or Live Build Exercise - Level 3 — In-Person Co-Founder Day (half day, SF) - Reference Checks + Offer We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran or military status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law.