Chief Technology Officer

Many early-stage CTO roles are dominated by the search for product-market fit. This is a rare opportunity to take an early-stage product with proven demand and focus on scaling it, and we are looking for a CTO to build and own our technology organisation as the company scales.

We're looking for a hands-on approach: someone who can architect, write code and lead. You'll take full ownership of the technology strategy behind the platform, as well as the team and development processes to build it. The platform spans metering and IoT data pipelines all the way through to billing, collections and customer care. It's a rare opportunity to lead technology development across hardware, software and financial ledgers.

You don't need to have held the CTO title before: we're just as interested in a strong senior engineer or engineering lead ready to step up as we are in a seasoned CTO. If you bring a positive attitude, have a curiosity to learn, are a strong problem solver and can deliver solid, reliable technology, you'll be a great fit.

We're building the technology platform to manage private utility networks around the world. This is a huge hidden market that is deeply underserved by technology. Apartment blocks, shopping centres, industrial estates and entire urban developments all run private networks, providing electricity, water, heat or gas that must be metered, billed and collected. Each of our customers is effectively its own mini utility company that runs on spreadsheets, legacy technology and manual processes.

The platform is already live with customers in the UK, Kenya and Nigeria, and we have a large pipeline of new customers to onboard.

The Network Nation Platform is a full-stack utility manager for private networks. It communicates with meters in the field, collects and cleans readings, manages tariffs and billing, collects payments and maintains a full double-entry accounting ledger for both the customer and the network owner.

The platform has two main user groups: customers and tenants who pay for their utilities through our customer mobile app, and landlords and property managers who manage their networks through our network manager web app.

We run on a modern stack and favour simple, reliable and battle-tested tools:

• IoT metering, gateways and capture (Modbus, LoRaWAN and MQTT)
• A backend utility management platform and APIs (Python, FastAPI, AWS, Docker, Postgres, GitHub, Sentry, Stripe)
• A customer mobile application (React Native, Expo)
• A web-based network manager application (React, TypeScript)

• Set and own the technical roadmap and architecture strategy across the whole platform, including mobile and web apps, the backend utility management platform, the ledger system, and IoT data pipelines and device management
• Stay hands-on where it matters: architect and contribute directly to the core platform
• Build, hire and lead the engineering organisation as it grows
• Work with the founders to set the overall direction and culture of the business, as a key decision maker on big strategic decisions such as new products or market entry
• Guide technical decisions as the team and product surface area expand into new markets
• Set and enforce coding standards, review team code and develop the team around you
• Define the software development and deployment process, and own the company's approach to AI-assisted engineering and AI-first engineering practices
• Represent the technology function to the board, investors, and key customers
• Own technology risk across the group, including security, data protection and regulatory compliance across our current and future operations

• A player-manager at heart: someone who enjoys building and architecting software and hardware systems as well as leading and managing teams
• Strong commercial, architectural and product judgement: able to balance speed, simplicity, customer experience and long-term scalability
• A track record of delivering successful tech products, whether as a CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, or a senior engineer ready to step into the role for the first time
• Utility, energy or fintech sector background is a strong plus, ideally with comfort working on ledgers and financial systems
• Startup mentality: resourceful and pragmatic, able to make a little go a long way
• Able to operate across the full spectrum, from hands-on code-level implementation to board-level strategic decision-making
• Strong technical grounding: experience building and maintaining modern full-stack software platforms, spanning backend services and databases, web and mobile applications, and connected device and data capture systems
• Experience owning payment or financial-transaction systems in production, ideally across multiple markets or currencies
• Experience owning technology risk, including security, data protection and compliance

• Real ownership: build the engineering organisation from the ground up
• Direct partnership with our founders, with a genuine seat at the leadership table
• Shape the technical and architectural direction of the company as it scales
• Technical breadth across real-time systems, IoT and hardware integration, ledgers and payments
• Competitive, leadership-level compensation with meaningful equity
• A really interesting domain: solve practical energy and infrastructure challenges in some of the world's most interesting and fast-evolving markets