Co-Founder / CTO at Consumer AI Startup (San Francisco)

About Us

Primal's building a personal, AI-native utility system for human connection and commerce. We're taking a radically different approach in the consumer AI space by NOT focusing on general intelligence or reasoning. But rather, we’re leveraging intelligent systems to help us solve our most pressing human coordination challenges. We’re essentially building a “dumb AI” that’s lite, simple, ethical, and useful for everyday consumers.

Led by a design founder and ex-VC, Primal’s been incubating in stealth for the past four years. Now we’re excited to expand our founding team and bring on a technical co-founder who can help us chart the engineering and AI direction for our company.

This is a ground-floor opportunity to build a novel, category-defining product, establish its technical foundation, and scale with a world-class team gearing up to go viral.

The Role

As the CTO at a design-led company, your primary role will focus on translating existing product design into scalable, backend architecture. However, this is not just a technical role — you'll be a full partner working to build the company from the ground up, and will be deeply involved in shaping our market narrative, fundraising cycles, and (non-traditional) company culture.

If you’re a scrappy, product-obsessed builder who’d rather focus on advancing novel, consumer experiences than frontier AI research, then this role is for you.

Key Responsibilities:

• Take full ownership over our technical vision and underlying infrastructure
• Lead our AI/ML research and development processes, selecting appropriate models, frameworks, and approaches
• Make strategic decisions regarding build vs. buy, open-source vs. proprietary, and how our technical partnerships will be structured
• Build the initial product from 0→1, writing production code and making sharp technical tradeoffs
• Partner with our co-founders on fundraising, commercial development, product rollouts, and GTM strategy
• Recruit, hire, and lead our engineering teams as we scale
• Represent the company to investors, partners, consumers, and the broader dev community

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 5–10 years of software engineering experience, with clear examples of taking consumer products from 0→ meaningful scale
• Genuine AI/ML depth — not just API integration, but a real understanding of how models work, where they fail, and how to build reliable systems around them (e.g. deep experience developing RAG systems, agentic architectures, context engineering, and/or custom neural networks)
• Strong full-stack instincts: ability to build end-to-end when needed
• Experience with the realities of consumer product security — user auth, data handling, regulatory considerations, etc.
• Proven ability to hire, mentor, and establish technical culture, even if at a small scale

Nice to Haves:

• An interest in computer vision
• Familiarity with privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and confidential computing
• Experience with lower-level (systems) programming languages (Rust, C++)
• Some technical thought leadership and/or the desire to influence and educate the public

This Role Would Be Perfect for Someone Who:

• Built something cool in the last cycle, and is now looking for their next big thing
• Relishes the opportunity to build a novel consumer product from scratch
• Has deep founder DNA with sharp product instincts
• Desires a healthy amount of autonomy over technical product decisions
• Is a true systems-thinker who thrives in complex stacks and hybrid architectures
• Is comfortable wearing multiple hats when going from 0→1
• Can translate highly technical concepts into crisp, clear sound bites
• Is a natural team-builder and notorious talent magnet
• Is innately curious about human needs and behaviors
• Knows when and how to delegate to coding agents
• Can move fast with minimal process
• Operates with extreme high integrity
• Genuinely wants to bring fun, safe AI to the masses
• Has a contrarian...almost rebellious spirit
• Still has a chip on their shoulder with something left to prove

*Note: This role may require traveling between NYC and SF for extended periods of time

What We Offer

Equity & Compensation:

• Significant equity stake (20-30%) as a true co-founder, not an employee
• Competitive salary post-raise (initially may be minimal or deferred)
• Standard 4-year vesting with 1-year cliff
• Family-friendly perks

Primal is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all team members.