FlavorScale is looking for a Founding CTO who ships fast, loves food, and wants to turn an already‑proven MVP into the Gen Z food discovery platform across Northwestern Europe. The app is live on Firebase, we’ve run a pre‑pilot with our biggest success in foodie‑city Copenhagen, and now we’re levelling up for a bigger, louder, more impactful pilot in a major European foodie city while transforming into an AI‑driven, data‑generating machine.

FlavorScale is where Gen Z goes to decide where to eat, what to try, and which spots actually match their taste – not just what’s trending. Think food discovery, community and deals in one place, with AI at the core and data fuelling everything we do.

Our MVP is built on Google Firebase, already tested with real users, and now we’re ready to scale, personalize, and own the food discovery space for a new generation.

Your role as Founding CTO

You’re not “just” joining a startup. You’re stepping in as co‑architect of the product and company.

• Own the tech vision and architecture as we grow from scrappy MVP to a scalable consumer platform.

• Take over and level up our Firebase‑based stack (Firestore, Cloud Functions, Auth, Storage, security rules, CI/CD) and shape our next‑gen setup on Google Cloud.

• Design and build AI/ML‑powered features: recommendation engine, discovery feeds, search/ranking, and personalised food journeys.

• Be the technical face of FlavorScale: sit at the table for product decisions, investor conversations and our first official funding round planned for 2026 Q2.​

You’ll start with meaningful equity as a true co‑founder, then move into a startup salary after the round.

Technical must‑haves

You’re a builder first, with opinions and battle scars.

• ~5+ years of hands‑on development, with shipped web or mobile products that real people use.

• Strong experience with Firebase & Google Cloud:

  • Firestore data modelling and queries

  • Cloud Functions

  • Auth & security rules

  • Storage and deployment/CI workflows

• Comfortable across the stack: at least one frontend framework (React / React Native / Flutter) and one backend language (TypeScript/Node or Python preferred).

• Solid in API design and integration, performance tuning, and making pragmatic trade‑offs between speed, cost and robustness.

AI, data and architecture mindset

FlavorScale is becoming a data and AI company. You’ll help make that real.

• Practical AI/ML product experience: you’ve integrated recommendation systems, smart ranking, or LLM‑based features into real products, not just hackathon demos.​

• Strong data mindset: event tracking, analytics, A/B testing basics, and turning behaviour into product decisions and experiments.

• Able to design a scalable architecture for a consumer app: modular, evolvable, and ready to handle growth without constant rewrites.

• Familiar with privacy and security basics for consumer data in an EU context.

Leadership, team and social skills

You’re technical, but you’re also the person others want to build with.

• Proven hands‑on leadership: led a small team, a squad, or complex projects end‑to‑end; you’re comfortable planning, executing and iterating.

• Strong communicator who can explain tech clearly to non‑technical people and confidently represent FlavorScale with investors, partners and communities.​

• Team builder: excited to hire, onboard and mentor early engineers, set engineering standards, and shape a healthy, ambitious culture from day one.

• High ownership and initiative: you spot problems early, propose solutions, and are comfortable making decisions under uncertainty.

Who you are (vibes)

• Young, roughly 20–35, energetic, ambitious, and ready to put your name on something big.

• A real foodie. You care about restaurants, food culture and Gen Z behaviour in cities like Amsterdam, Paris, London, Copenhagen, Berlin, etc.​

• You enjoy working closely with the founding team: jam sessions, whiteboards, pilot‑city trips, visiting partners, and being out in the community. Not just behind a screen.

• Experience in foodtech, marketplaces or SaaS/platform products is a big plus.​

Location, language and commitment

• Ideally based close to Amsterdam/Rotterdam or elsewhere in Northwestern Europe, with openness to spend serious in‑person time in the Netherlands after the 2026 Q2 funding round.

• Fluent in English and at least one other language relevant to the region (Dutch, German, a Scandinavian language, French, etc.).​

• Ready to join now on an equity‑first package, transitioning to an agreed startup salary post‑investment, with long‑term upside as a core founder.

If your perfect week looks like shipping features, playing with data, shaping product with the CEO, and celebrating wins over amazing food in great cities, this is your cue.

Send a short intro, links to things you’ve built, and your current favourite food city and why. Let’s see if we’re building the future of food discovery together.