Founding Technical Leader - CTO / Founding Engineer, Orbital
Location: NYC (preferred) / Remote (US)
Stage: Pre-seed (Venture Studio backed)
Comp: Significant equity + competitive cash
What we’re building
Commerce is undergoing a fundamental shift.
For the past decade, ecommerce has been built around static pages, manual optimization, and fragmented tooling — from analytics to experimentation to personalization.
But as AI-native systems emerge, the model is changing:
from static experiences → to adaptive, decision-driven systems.
We believe the next generation of commerce will not be defined by better pages, but by systems that can dynamically interpret user behavior and guide outcomes in real time.
Orbital is building toward that future.
We’re focused on creating an intelligence layer within the commerce stack that enables more responsive, adaptive experiences — without requiring brands to rebuild their infrastructure.
Why this is interesting
This is not a traditional SaaS product.
It’s a systems problem at the intersection of:
- real-time data
- decisioning
- user experience
- and applied AI
The core challenge is designing a system that can:
- interpret incomplete behavioral signals
- make decisions under uncertainty
- operate with low latency
- and continuously improve based on outcomes
If done well, this becomes a foundational layer in how modern digital experiences are built and optimized.
The role
We’re looking for a founding technical leader to own architecture and build this from zero.
This could look like:
- Founding Engineer
- Head of Engineering
- CTO
depending on your background.
You will:
- Define the system architecture from first principles
- Build the initial product (hands-on)
- Make key decisions across data, infra, and product systems
- Work directly with the founder on product direction
- Hire and lead the early engineering team
This is a true 0→1 role — not a scaling role.
What we’re looking for
We care less about titles and more about how you think and build.
Strong signals:
- You’ve built or want to build product-facing systems, not just internal tooling
- Experience with real-time systems, data pipelines, or decisioning / recommendation systems
- Comfortable working across backend, frontend, and product
- Excited by ambiguity and early-stage building
- Strong product intuition — not just technical execution
Bonus (not required):
- Experience in ecommerce, marketplaces, or personalization
- Familiarity with event-driven or streaming architectures
- Exposure to ML / inference systems
What this is not
- Not a pure infrastructure role
- Not a maintenance or scaling role
- Not joining a large existing team
You will be building the foundation.
Why join
- Massive ownership: significant equity stake
- True technical ownership: define the system from day one
- Backed environment: venture studio with capital + support
- Category creation: opportunity to define a new layer in commerce
How to think about this role
This is for someone who wants to:
- build a company, not just write code
- own a system end-to-end
- work directly with a founder on something ambiguous but high upside
If this resonates, reach out directly. We’re happy to start with a conversation — not a formal process.