Chief Technology Officer

Heedly · Veterinary marketing and software

Location: Barcelona area, open to remote (working hours must overlap with UK and Spain) | Compensation: 25% equity | Commitment: Full-time | Language: Fluent English

Heedly helps independent veterinary practices in the UK win new clients and keep them. We started as a marketing agency (websites, branding, Google Ads, photography and growth strategy) and have built our own software platform for vet practices on top of that work.

The platform runs our clients' websites and gives practices one place to see how their marketing is performing and how it affects clinical performance. Our goal is to make it the best website and growth platform for vet practices in the UK, then add products that increase each practice's revenue and client lifetime value.

• A live, multi-tenant platform in production, with 14 practices registered and client websites already running on it.
• 11 veterinary practice groups as clients (around 20 sites), most paying monthly, with further proposals outstanding.
• A website builder that is compliant with the CMA's pricing transparency ruling, optimised for SEO and AI search, and editable three ways: click-and-edit, structured fields, and describing a change for AI to make.
• A marketing and KPI dashboard integrating Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, Google Business Profile, Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Lupa.
• Built modules for CRM, communications and marketing emails, reviews, social, appointments, health plans, payments, careers, blog and projects.
• A documented codebase: a full technical and operational handbook covering architecture, development, deployment, integrations, backups and personal data handling.
• A roadmap with clear demand from existing clients.
  

We need someone to take full technical ownership: run what exists, finish the handover properly, and build the next products.

You won't start from zero. The product works, clients use it and pay for it, and the agency side gives us direct access to practices and their problems. Most vet software is old and slow to change, and practices are under new pressure from the CMA ruling and from AI changing how pet owners find a vet. That gives a small, fast team a clear opening.

The business is still small. This role suits someone who wants ownership and upside in a growing company more than a salary today.

1. Make the website and KPI platform the best in the market. Deeper integration with practice management systems (PMS) such as RxWorks, Provet and Merlin, so prices, bookings and clinical data flow into the platform automatically.
2. Build products that increase client lifetime value. Health plan subscriptions, online booking, AI receptionist and further items from the roadmap.
3. Make onboarding and client work as efficient as possible. Use AI, agents and automation to cut the time it takes to launch a client and to run our internal processes.
   

• Build: scoping, building and shipping new features and products, working directly from client needs.
• Platform: maintenance, performance, security, uptime, incident response and on-call cover.
• Operations: deployments, CI/CD, monitoring and alerting, backups and tested recovery, and a staging environment.
• Integrations: PMS systems, Google, Meta, Stripe, Postmark, Cloudflare and AI providers.
• Data protection: UK GDPR compliance, personal data requests, and keeping client and pet-owner data secure.
• Documentation: keeping the handbook current, so that someone else could pick the platform up.
• Handover: completing the open operational items from the handover in your first weeks, including access procedures, monitoring checks and a backup restore test.
• AI tooling: setting up and improving the agent workflows we use to build faster.

You'll work autonomously. This isn't a team-building role: we want someone who builds, using AI to do the work of a larger team.

• Laravel 13 on PHP 8.5, Filament 5, Livewire 4
• Multi-tenancy with stancl/tenancy and a modular architecture (16 modules)
• MySQL, PostgreSQL (embeddings), Redis with Horizon, Memcached, Reverb
• DigitalOcean (London) deployed through Laravel Forge
• Cloudflare (R2 storage, custom domains, image resizing), Postmark, Stripe
• OpenAI and Gemini via Laravel AI, plus an MCP server and API (Passport)
• Pest, PHPStan, GitHub Actions, Sentry, UptimeRobot, 1Password
• Repository already set up for AI-assisted development (Claude Code, agent instructions, Laravel Boost)
  

• Senior Laravel experience. Filament, Livewire and multi-tenant applications are a strong plus.
• Experience running production systems on your own. Deployments, Linux servers, databases, queues, monitoring, backups and incidents, without a DevOps team behind you.
• AI-native ways of working. You use Claude Code or similar agents every day, can show what you've built with them, and know how to put LLM features into a product.
• Integration experience. REST APIs, OAuth, webhooks, and working with poorly documented third-party systems.
• Payments and subscriptions. Stripe billing, recurring payments and webhooks.
• Data protection. Working knowledge of UK GDPR and handling personal data safely.
• Product judgement. You can talk to a practice manager, understand the problem, scope something small and ship it without a detailed spec.
• Ownership. You want to own the outcome, and you're comfortable making decisions and being accountable for them.
  

• Veterinary or healthcare software experience, especially PMS, booking or telehealth
• Voice AI and telephony (e.g. Twilio, Vapi, Retell)
• Internationalisation and multi-language sites
• Technical SEO, Core Web Vitals and structured data
• Spanish
• Founding engineer or early-stage startup experience
  

• No salary at the start. If you can't work without a salary for a period, this role isn't for you, and we understand.
• 25% equity in Heedly (the whole business, agency and platform), paid out on a sale of the company.
• Vesting over 3 years: one third vests after a 12-month cliff, then the rest vests quarterly over the following two years.
• Everything is agreed in writing before you start: equity, vesting, retainer, responsibilities and what happens if either of us walks away.
  

• You own day-to-day technical decisions and the build. Major architecture changes, new vendors and new recurring costs are agreed with the founder first.
• Heedly owns all code, IP, data and accounts. Everything you build for Heedly is assigned to Heedly from day one, and all services are registered to Heedly.
• Good leaver and bad leaver terms apply to vested equity.
• A 12-month restriction on working in the veterinary sector after leaving.
• We work to a quarterly roadmap, with regular check-ins with the founder.
  

1. Intro & Terms Call: Your background, why Heedly, and the terms up front: equity, vesting, retainer and responsibilities.
2. Technical Test + Defence: A standalone technical test, followed by a call where you present and defend your solution.
3. Culture & Approach Interview: How you’d approach your first 90 days, plus examples of production systems and AI-assisted work you’ve built.
4. Contract Delivery: Sharing the contract, covering the terms agreed at the intro call, sent for signature.
   

Send your CV or LinkedIn, links to things you've built, and a few lines on how you use AI in your development work to Matt Madden, Director at Heedly: matt@heedly.co

www.heedly.co