CTO/Co-Founder (StealthCo, Ag Equipment Dispatch Optimization SaaS)

Purdue University’s Digital Innovation in Agri-Food Systems Laboratory (DIAL), a part of the Purdue Applied Research Institute (PARI) is a venture studio focused on creating startups that bring digital innovation to our food and agriculture system. In our work, we explore unmet needs in the agri-food value chain, develop potential solutions, and launch new companies to build and bring them to market. 

We’ve partnered with High Alpha Innovation partners with the world’s leading organizations to innovate through startup creation. Part strategy consultancy, part venture builder, our team is a diverse mix of highly experienced company builders, designers, and strategists who work with corporate and university partners to source, launch, and invest in venture studios and advantaged startups.

We are seeking a world-class entrepreneur for the role of CTO and Co-Founder for our newest company, which is currently in stealth mode (hereafter “StealthCo”), to bring to market logistics optimization software for Ag Retailers. Targeting the agriculture industry, StealthCo’s platform will enable Ag Retailers to better serve their customers while improving company-wide operations by efficiently dispatching, optimizing routing, and mitigating unforeseen circumstances for equipment.

As the CTO and Co-Founder, you will have the opportunity to turn the validated concept for StealthCo into a growing, important, and durable business, from the ground up.  As the CTO you will work to build the MVP, hire a world-class team of software developers, and partner with the CEO to define the product roadmap and go-to-market strategy.  This is a unique opportunity to be a creator, builder, and innovator to build a world-class product from scratch. 

You’ll be supported by the High Alpha Innovation and DIAL Ventures team, who have seen exponential growth across a variety of SaaS platforms in multiple industries and successful exits.

What You'll Do:

• Own the Tech Stack and product development; Partner with the CEO on all technology-related matters and participate in sales presentations and customer meetings
• Deliver product-related business objectives of the Company; Deliver projects on time and on budget; develop and manage OPEX budget 
• Recruit technical and project management teams and provide training, mentoring, and management
• Direct responsibility for the entire product lifecycle; Architecture, development, product management, DevOps, InfoSec, production release, and help desk functions
• Develop the product roadmap and release schedule; build on, or change, the initial technological architecture
• Maintain up-to-date product requirements and 3rd party libraries/ registries and APIs;  Create a Product Specification and Technical Specification and keep both documents up to date (periodically).
• Communicate technology, methodology/strategy, and data to customers, partners, and investors
• Develop and maintain risk management and data protection processes
• Privacy & security policies and procedures
• Run Agile development sprints, backlog grooming, and planning sessions; accept and use customer and user feedback to optimize product features and functionality
• Individual Contributor duties include but are not limited to; review of code developed by team members, code deployments, debugging (QC), production releases, and day-to-day management of outsourced development partners (at least initially).

Requirements

• Successful track record as a CTO or similar technical leadership role at an early-stage startup in the logistics/routing space.
• Product expertise, and a proven track record of creating user experiences that are sticky, drive adoption, and satisfy & delight users
• Hands-on technical leader with experience developing cloud-native, API-first headless architecture
• Direct supervision of agile software development; Business Requirements documentation and translation into executable development sprints, day-to-day team/scrum management
• Track record of delivering development projects on time and on budget; proven ability to motivate teams and create a positive, challenging, and enjoyable work environment 
• Must have a strong foundation and opinion on both frontend frameworks and backend infrastructure.
• Experience building teams from scratch as well as managing on-shore or off-shore development partners and budgets
• Desire and ability to be customer-facing, comfortable directly engaging customers at all levels; business rules documentation through to C-level sales presentations with the ability to communicate complex subjects in a clear, concise manner 
• Founder experience is preferred or experience working in an early-stage venture-backed company in a key leadership role. Always ready to jump