Chief Technology Officer for Civic Media & AI Startup (Founding Team)

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) — Engage60 (Civic Media & AI Startup | Pre-Seed Stage) Company: Engage60 Location: Remote (U.S.) Start Date: Immediate Compensation: Equity-based during pre-seed build phase. Upon successful close of the anticipated $1,200,000 Pre-Seed Round, a transition to market-based salary may be negotiated, contingent upon funding terms, performance expectations, and mutual agreement. Eligibility: This position is open to candidates legally authorized to work in the United States. Due to the nature of our platform, licensing relationships, data governance requirements, and civic engagement focus, we are currently only considering U.S.-based applicants. Applicants must be able to enter into U.S.-based equity and contractual agreements. About Engage60 Engage60 is a pre-seed civic media startup building a short-form platform focused on constitutional literacy, structured civic engagement, and public trust. We are designing a system that:

• Maps news stories to U.S. Constitutional principles.
• Enables structured civic response (not outrage engagement).
• Integrates AI responsibly with human oversight.
• Operates under a defined neutrality and governance framework.

The platform is currently in the pre-seed build phase and is not yet live. The Opportunity We are seeking a founding CTO to architect and lead the technical foundation of Engage60. You will define the platform architecture from first principles — including system design, AI integration, security posture, and operational resilience. This role includes responsibility for security architecture, remediation planning, and eliminating single points of failure during the pre-launch phase.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement the platform architecture (mobile, backend, AI layer).
• Build secure ingestion and transformation pipelines for licensed media.
• Architect constitutional mapping workflows (human + AI hybrid model).
• Establish IAM, logging, evidence retention, and security baselines.
• Define DevSecOps practices from day one.
• Conduct security audits of existing development environments and infrastructure.
• Lead remediation efforts for credential exposure, access control gaps, logging deficiencies, and continuity risks.
• Implement structured incident response procedures and harden the platform prior to public launch.
• Secure waitlist and user data environments to meet audit-ready standards.
• Build systems resilient to election-cycle stress and rapid user growth.
• Lead engineering hiring roadmap post-funding.
• Participate in investor technical diligence discussions.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering or technical leadership.
• Experience shipping scalable consumer platforms.
• Strong background in cloud architecture (AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Experience with AI/LLM integration and API orchestration.
• Demonstrated experience in cybersecurity architecture and remediation.
• Familiarity with compliance environments (SOC2, GDPR, election sensitivity).
• Experience stabilizing or restructuring early-stage technical environments strongly preferred.
• Comfort operating in pre-seed ambiguity.
• Bias toward documentation, system clarity, and operational rigor.
• Previous experience working for or building a successful startup will be strongly considered.

What This Role Offers Most civic platforms fail because governance is retrofitted and AI is layered without auditability. Engage60 is building differently — architecture, governance, and security come first.

• Define the security posture and AI governance framework from inception.
• Lead remediation and hardening before scale.
• Architect a constitutional AI model designed for neutrality and structured civic participation.
• Build infrastructure designed for public trust — not engagement addiction.

To Apply Please submit:

• A brief statement on why you are interested in civic media.
• An example of a system you architected from scratch.
• A short note on how you approach AI governance and security in public-facing platforms.

Job Types: Full-time, Part-time, Contract Work Location: Remote Apply tot his job Apply To this Job