Company Description
Zephary Collective is an independent Institutional Risk & Governance Advisory practice headquartered in London, working with family offices, private equity firms, institutional investors, founders, and executive leadership teams. The firm focuses on identifying, governing, and protecting intangible assets that contribute to durable competitive advantage and long-term enterprise value.
Zephary’s advisory practice sits at the intersection of institutional governance, risk, trust, reputation, strategic execution, and capital confidence, providing independent strategic counsel, governance insight, and institutional oversight while remaining separate from implementation.
Alongside its advisory practice, Zephary Collective is developing Lila™ — Governed Judgement Infrastructure, a proprietary institutional technology platform designed to govern, preserve, and reconstruct the reasoning behind consequential institutional decisions. Lila emerged from the practical requirements of Zephary’s institutional advisory environment, providing the foundation through which the underlying concept could be formalised, developed, tested, and stress-tested.
The two activities are connected by a common institutional thesis: enduring institutions require stronger infrastructure for governing judgement, accountability, trust, and decision-making.
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Role Description
The Co-Founder will play a central role across both Zephary Collective and Lila™, with the principal focus of the role being the technical development, productisation, and commercialisation of Lila as Zephary’s proprietary technology platform develops into a scalable institutional technology business.
Within Lila, the Co-Founder will work closely with the Founder to develop and strengthen the platform’s technical architecture, engineering roadmap, software development, security, scalability, and product capabilities. They will translate institutional requirements and governance principles into robust technical solutions while helping ensure that Lila’s core architecture remains resilient as the platform moves from its existing working environment towards multi-tenant deployment.
The role will also contribute to Lila’s product and commercial strategy, including design-partner development, technical demonstrations, institutional market engagement, strategic partnerships, product refinement, and investor discussions. The Co-Founder will help establish Lila’s position within the emerging market for governed judgement and institutional decision infrastructure.
Within Zephary Collective, the Co-Founder will contribute to the firm’s institutional technology strategy and the continued development of the relationship between the advisory practice and Lila. This may include supporting technology-enabled advisory capabilities, institutional research, strategic initiatives, selected client or stakeholder engagements, and the firm’s broader development where relevant to the Co-Founder’s expertise.
The role requires an individual who can operate across engineering, software development, product strategy, institutional governance, and commercial development, while maintaining a clear distinction between Zephary’s independent advisory function and Lila’s development as a proprietary technology business.
This is a full-time, hybrid role based in London, combining in-person collaboration with the Founder, team, institutional stakeholders, and prospective partners with flexibility for remote work.
Founding Commitment & Equity
This is a founding commitment, not a conventional employment position. The successful candidate will assume founding-level responsibility for taking forward the architecture initially conceived and established by the Founder, building upon its existing foundations while exercising independent technical judgement to strengthen, improve and evolve the architecture as Lila™ moves towards production and scale.
The role requires sustained commitment beyond a narrowly defined technical function, including the judgement, resilience and initiative necessary to operate effectively amid the uncertainty, responsibility and opportunity inherent in building an early-stage technology company.
In return, the role carries genuine ownership participation in Lila™ and the opportunity to share directly in the enterprise value created through its development and growth. The successful candidate will contribute not only to Lila’s architecture, infrastructure and technical execution, but also to product evolution, institutional engagement, commercial development, team building and the company’s long-term strategic direction.
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Qualifications
* Degree in Engineering, Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a closely related technical discipline.
* Strong software engineering and development capability, with the ability to contribute directly to Lila’s architecture and product development.
* Professional experience within a Big Four firm, with exposure to complex enterprise, risk, technology or institutional environments.
* Prior experience in a consulting or advisory role, with the ability to engage credibly with senior stakeholders and translate institutional requirements into practical solutions.
* Experience designing, building, scaling, or maintaining secure B2B, enterprise, SaaS, or institutional technology platforms.
* Strong understanding of software architecture, databases, APIs, security, testing, system design, and scalable infrastructure.
* Ability to translate complex institutional and governance requirements into practical technical and product solutions.
* Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with an interest in institutional governance, risk, accountability, and decision infrastructure.
* Experience contributing to product development, technical product strategy, or the commercialisation of technology.
* Excellent communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively with technical teams, senior executives, institutional stakeholders, prospective clients, and investors.
* Understanding of financial services, private markets, family offices, professional services, governance, compliance, or institutional decision-making environments would be advantageous.
* Entrepreneurial mindset and willingness to operate hands-on across engineering, product development, market validation, and strategic execution.
* Ability to contribute to the long-term technical architecture of Lila while preserving its principles of integrity, accountability, security, traceability and governed judgment.
* Strong Alignment with Zephary Collective's commitment to independent judgement, institutional trust, constructive challenge and long-term enterprise value creation.