Founding Engineer (Path to CTO)

We are partnering with a venture-backed startup building foundational infrastructure for secure AI deployment inside organizations. Operating from Barcelona, the company focuses on solving one of the biggest barriers to enterprise AI adoption: governance, security, and compliance.

After launching an initial AI product, the team identified that long-term value does not sit in the interface layer, but in the infrastructure that allows organizations to use AI safely and responsibly. Following this strategic pivot, they are building a secure AI infrastructure platform designed to become a core layer for enterprise AI systems.

This role sits at the center of that transition.

What they are building

The platform provides a secure control layer between company data and large language models, enabling organizations to deploy AI systems without designing governance and security frameworks from scratch.

Core capabilities include:

• LLM-agnostic RAG pipelines
• Automatic PII detection during ingestion
• Prompt risk detection and guardrail enforcement
• Data isolation and access control
• Full auditability and data lineage
• Built-in security and compliance enforcement

The goal is to help teams ship AI products quickly while ensuring sensitive data remains protected, actions are traceable, and compliance is enforced from the start.

This is infrastructure, not a chatbot wrapper.

Technical environment

Current stack includes:

• Python and Go backend services
• GCP infrastructure
• Vector databases and LLM integrations
• Pub/Sub and gRPC communication
• TypeScript frontend (not a current priority)

Roughly half of the existing codebase is reusable. The incoming engineer will evaluate what to keep, refactor key components, and define the architecture moving forward.

Team & structure

The engineering team currently includes backend, DevOps/AI Ops, and ML profiles. Following the strategic pivot, the team structure will evolve, and this role will play a key part in shaping the architecture and future hiring roadmap.

You will collaborate with the existing team while progressively building and leading the engineering function from Barcelona., This position begins as a Founding Engineer role with a clear path toward CTO based on milestones and company growth.

Initially, you will focus on delivering a working platform ready for early enterprise conversations, validating security mechanisms, and helping shape the product architecture. As the company gains traction, you will support early customer onboarding, participate in technical discussions with investors and partners, and define the technical roadmap.

Over time, the role evolves into full ownership of architecture, technical strategy, and team building.

This is not execution of a predefined roadmap. It is ownership and creation.

• Strong production experience with Python and/or Go
• Comfortable operating cloud infrastructure
• Experience building systems handling sensitive data
• Practical experience deploying LLM-based systems
• Ability to balance speed with reliability

Security expertise is not mandatory, but familiarity with compliance concepts (GDPR, SOC2, HIPAA) is valuable.

Impact, ownership mindset, and trajectory matter more than years of tenure.