Location
Bengaluru
Stage
Early-stage AI startup (Founding Team)
Compensation
Competitive salary + significant equity
About Pulse
Pulse is building the AI Operating Layer for team communication. Work today happens in chats — but chats don’t track work. Pulse solves this by turning every conversation into:
- tasks
- follow-ups
- decisions
- meeting notes
- insights
— automatically. Imagine WhatsApp simplicity × Slack intelligence × AI-native workflows. No setup. No manual task creation. Teams simply chat, and Pulse organizes their entire work. We are building the future of how operational teams, SMBs, and frontline teams run their daily execution.
Role Overview
We are looking for a Founding CTO who will architect, build, and scale the core technology behind Pulse — an AI-native chat platform that understands conversations and converts them into structured work. You will lead product engineering, architecture, AI systems, infrastructure, and security from zero-to-one, while shaping the long-term technology vision. This is not a managerial role — it is a hands-on, product-obsessed, 0→1 builder role.
What You Will Build
As the CTO, you will lead:
- The Pulse Chat Engine: A fast, reliable, WhatsApp-level UX with:
- real-time messaging
- multi-device sync
- attachments, voice notes, presence, typing indicators
- scalable, low-latency infra
- The AI Work Engine (Core of Pulse): Systems that:
- extract tasks, follow-ups, deadlines from natural conversation
- generate daily reports, summaries, meeting notes
- identify decisions and insights
- monitor team execution
- create a manager dashboard automatically
- Architecture & Infrastructure:
- multi-tenant cloud infra
- real-time event architecture
- secure messaging
- PII handling & data governance
- scalability for millions of messages/day
- Product & Engineering Team: You will build and lead a world-class engineering team (backend, frontend, AI, devops).
Tech Stack (Recommended / Flexible)
You should be strong in most of these:
- Backend: Node.js / Go / Python
- Frontend: React / React Native
- DB: Postgres, Redis, ElasticSearch
- Infra: AWS / GCP, Kubernetes, event-driven architecture
- AI/LLMs: OpenAI, fine-tuning, embeddings, RAG, pipelines, agents
- Real-Time Systems: WebSockets, Kafka / PubSub
Who You Are
- 5–12+ years building scalable products (ideally in messaging, workflow, or AI).
- Have built core systems end-to-end (not just features).
- Obsessed with speed, reliability, and product quality.
- Strong AI understanding (LLMs, orchestration, agents, RAG).
- A builder-first CTO — you can code, ship, architect, debug, and take responsibility.
- Can think like a founder — ruthless prioritization, customer obsessed.
- Ability to hire & lead a small but elite engineering team.
- Wants to create a category-defining AI product.
Bonus:
- Experience building chat apps, workflow tools, or AI reasoning layers.
- Previously a founding engineer / tech lead at a startup.
What Success Looks Like (First 6 Months)
- Build the MVP chat + AI engine from scratch.
- Ship a stable beta used by 50–100 real teams.
- Build a fast, delightful user experience (WhatsApp-level speed).
- Create AI systems that reliably convert messages → work.
- Grow engineering team to 5–8 high-quality engineers.
- Build a scalable architecture ready for Series A hyper-growth.
Why Join Pulse
- You will build a new category: AI-native work operating systems.
- Ownership & freedom to define the entire tech vision.
- Work directly with founders who deeply understand the problem.
- Solve a universal painpoint: chaos in team communication.
- Build a product that millions of teams can use daily.
- Massive equity upside — you join as a founding leader.