CTO — Activdate | Austin, TX (Remote Flexible)
About Activdate:
Activdate is a two-sided marketplace and social calendar platform built for the active lifestyle and wellness industry. We give individuals a way to discover and join real-world activities happening around them. We give businesses — yoga studios, tennis clubs, run clubs, golf facilities, pickleball courts, wellness studios — the infrastructure to manage memberships, ticket events, and build their community ecosystem. All in one place. All built around the calendar.
We are live on the App Store at version 2.1.0 with a committed founding team, a Head of Product, a Senior Technical Advisor with deep product knowledge from day one, and a remote team of contracted frontend and backend engineers already in place. We are building something real and we are moving fast.
Our ethos is Power to the People. We build for community not algorithms. For shared time not attention.
The Role:
We are looking for a CTO to lead and optimize our existing engineering operation. You are not walking into a blank slate. You are walking into a functioning technical team with an established product, existing engineers, and a Senior Technical Advisor who has been guiding development from day one and will be there to onboard and support you through the transition. Your job is to take what exists, make it better, and scale it.
You will manage our remote engineering team, optimize our development processes, drive technical decision making, and own the roadmap execution. You will work closely with our Head of Product and Senior Technical Advisor to ensure the product vision and technical execution are in complete alignment.
What You'll Lead:
- Performance optimization — photo loading speed, general app lag, and navigation reconfiguration. Fast wins that establish your technical baseline immediately.
- Ticketing infrastructure — full implementation of our ticketed events system including payment processing, ticket management, confirmation flows, and business-side revenue tracking. This is our core monetization layer and it needs to be bulletproof.
- Business and group profiles — full implementation of business account infrastructure including membership management, analytics dashboard, and public ecosystem tools.
- Load and stress testing — the app needs to be architecturally ready for a significant high-volume traffic event at launch. You will own this preparation entirely.
- Security and privacy audit — we handle location data, user profiles, payment information, and membership data. Everything needs to be clean and secure before we scale.
- Team optimization — assess the current engineering team structure, identify gaps, and build the most efficient possible development operation going forward.
What You're Walking Into:
A live App Store product at version 2.1.0 built through 34 iterations. A Head of Product with 10+ years of UX and web app experience. A Senior Technical Advisor with deep product knowledge who has been guiding development from day one and will personally onboard you. A remote team of contracted frontend and backend engineers already executing. A clear product roadmap with defined priorities. A founding team that is fully committed and moving with urgency.
What We're Looking For:
- 5+ years full stack engineering experience. React Native or equivalent mobile development experience.
- Demonstrated experience managing and optimizing remote international engineering teams — this is essential.
- Experience scaling consumer social or marketplace applications.
- Strong product instincts — you understand that how something feels to a user matters as much as how it functions technically.
- Startup mentality — you make decisions with incomplete information, you thrive in fast-moving environments, and you find ambiguity energizing not paralyzing.
Required Technical Proficiencies:
Our current stack requires direct experience with the following:
- Mobile Development — Flutter and Dart. Our app is built entirely in Flutter and you must have hands-on experience building and optimizing Flutter applications.
- Backend — Spring Boot and Java. Our backend is built on Spring Boot and Java. You must be proficient in both and comfortable leading backend development and optimization in this environment.
- Cloud Infrastructure — AWS. Our cloud infrastructure runs on AWS. Experience architecting, managing, and scaling AWS environments is required.
- Database — PostgreSQL. Our database is PostgreSQL. Strong proficiency in Postgres including query optimization, schema design, and performance tuning is required.
Applications that do not demonstrate direct hands-on experience with this specific stack will not be considered. We are not looking for someone who is willing to learn these technologies. We need someone who already speaks this language fluently and can lead a team doing the same.
Bonus Points:
- Experience in active lifestyle, wellness, or events technology.
- Previous CTO or senior engineering leadership role at an early stage startup.
- Experience with payment infrastructure and ticketing systems.
- Austin based or Austin connected.
Compensation:
Meaningful equity stake commensurate with the scope and seniority of the role. Cash compensation discussed during the interview process.
[email protected] www.activdate.com
