Principal Architect (AI SaaS)

1) Company Description

We are an early-stage AI-driven SaaS company building a platform that analyzes complex PDF documents and generates structured, decision-ready reports. The product combines LLMs, document processing, and payment-gated workflows . We are currently in active development and are preparing for deployment, stabilization, and scale.

2) Role Description

We are looking for a Founding / Hands-On CTO (Part-Time initially) to take ownership of the technical direction during a critical phase of the product.

This role is focused on reviewing existing developer work, guiding architecture decisions, and supporting deployment to production . The engagement will remain part-time until the product is fully deployed, stable, and running reliably in production, with the possibility of evolving into a longer-term CTO role if aligned.

Key responsibilities include:

• Reviewing and auditing existing backend, frontend, and AI-related development work
• Challenging architecture, security, and scalability decisions
• Supporting and overseeing deployment to production and post-deployment stability
• Owning backend architecture, APIs, and authentication flows
• Overseeing AI / LLM integrations with cost and reliability controls
• Reviewing PDF ingestion, OCR, and document analysis pipelines
• Owning payments, entitlements, and access-gating logic
• Ensuring secure cloud infrastructure, logging, and monitoring
• Acting as the final technical authority until the product is production-ready and stable

3) Qualifications

Required:

• Strong hands-on experience with backend development (Node.js or Python)
• Proven experience shipping SaaS products to production
• Experience integrating LLMs / AI APIs in real-world applications
• Solid experience with Stripe payments and webhook handling
• Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Comfortable reviewing, correcting, and guiding contractor-built systems
• Product-focused mindset with strong delivery ownership

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience with document-heavy systems (PDF processing, OCR, parsing)
• Early-stage startup or founding experience
• Exposure to investor or due-diligence technical reviews