CTO (m/f/d) - Focus on TextChecker

GenApps has a founder and a subject matter expert, but no CTO yet. I'm looking for someone who doesn't just implement the technology but owns it: first for TextChecker, our focus product, and then for whatever comes next.

TextChecker is an assessment assistant for language teachers. It assesses writing against official rating scales, backs every judgement with evidence marked in the text, and shows how each proposal was reached. The teacher always has the last word.

A whole set of texts goes through in one run, handwritten work included. All storage and AI processing stays in the EU, and PII is replaced before any model sees a text. Data protection isn't optional. It's a prerequisite.

There's no engineering team yet and no processes you'd have to fight your way around.

Who this is for

I'm open about your CV, but not about your motivation. I'm looking for one of three profiles:

Hungry. You're early in your career but you have already successfully built and run software and want responsibility now, not someday. Every technical decision here lands on your desk. You'll learn in one year what takes three elsewhere, with a counterpart who shares first-hand product and industry experience.

Looking for a new challenge. You have a few years of experience and have successfully built and run SaaS offerings, you know larger organizations, and you've noticed that nothing there really challenges you anymore. Here you build something from the ground up instead of maintaining what exists, and you see every week what your work achieves.

Experienced and looking for the best environment. You've seen a lot and have nothing left to prove. You want an environment where your experience has direct impact: short paths, no politics, no endless alignment loops, and the freedom to build things the way you think is right.

What you'll own

- Technical responsibility for GenApps, first and foremost for TextChecker: architecture, code, operations

- The stack. You decide what we build with going forward, including what stays from the existing code and what goes

- The hardest question in the product: How do we prove that an assessment built from probabilistic and deterministic parts is transparent and reproducible? We have a first architecture. Proving that it holds is research, and it takes hypotheses, rigorous measurement and staying power

- Security and privacy from day one

- Your voice in product decisions. Three perspectives meet here: yours for technology, mine for product and market, and our subject matter expert's for the classroom. We decide by argument, not by rank. On technology the final say is yours. On product it's mine, and I only use it when we can't agree

- A say in what comes after TextChecker

What you bring, whichever profile you are

- You've built and run software that real people use, at work, in research or in your own projects

- Experience with web and backend development and cloud infrastructure

- You've engaged seriously with LLMs, beyond toy projects

- You've worked on a hard problem over a long period without losing yourself in it

- Security and privacy are part of your design, not the last step before release

- You make decisions without waiting for sign-off

- Fluent German and English. Code and research are in English. Our teachers, and their support requests, are in German

- A plus: experience with GDPR-compliant systems, text recognition (OCR) or education software

The honest part

- In the first year you won't lead a team. You'll build yourself, and you'll answer support tickets from teachers yourself

- There's no onboarding program and no corporate resources

- A lot hasn't been decided yet, and we have no paying customers yet

- Cash is tight in the first year. We're bootstrapped and grant-funded, and the next funding decisions are still pending. Depending on how that turns out and on what you want, this can be a salaried CTO role or a co-founder role with a real stake instead of a salary

What you get

- A product with a clear purpose

- A problem that deserves real research instead of a feature assembly line

- Short paths: days between idea and release, not quarters

- You work the way that suits you, whether remote, hybrid or on-site

- An equity stake is part of the offer, not an afterthought. We'll discuss the form openly

- A founder from a large software company who knows that technical debt is a product issue

Terms

Full-time, starting January 2027 or by arrangement. Remote, hybrid or on-site, whatever works for you. The company is based in Grieskirchen close to Linz, and we'll meet in person wherever is practical for both of us. As a salaried position, this falls under the Austrian collective agreement for the IT sector (IT-KV), classification "Leitung" (management), with a minimum base salary of €5,301 gross per month (paid 14 times a year, full-time). The actual salary depends on experience and qualifications.

How to apply

Send me your profile or CV, a link to something you've built, and three sentences: Which of the three profiles are you, and why GenApps? A cover letter is optional, but I love reading them. So if you send one as well, even better!

One thing upfront: I'm running this search myself, alongside building the product. A reply can take a few days, but every application gets one.