Technical cofounder (Co-Founder Position)

Technical Co-Founder & CTO (Hamburg)Role: Technical Co-Founder & CTOLocation: Hamburg (Hybrid / In-person preferred)Compensation: Co-Founder Equity (Pre-Seed)

About mindfuel | Rebuilding Cognitive Capacitymindfuel is not just another wellness application. Our mission is to enable individuals to rebuild and strengthen their cognitive capacity through precision nutrition to better handle high cognitive demands—preventively and in the moment. Operating at the intersection of Mental Health and "Food as Medicine", we are laying the groundwork for a highly scalable platform. I am currently preparing for a pre-seed round and am looking for a mature, experienced Technical Co-Founder to architect our foundation and scale this vision globally.

The Profile We NeedWe are looking for someone who has built from 0-to-1 before. Someone with discipline, structure, foresight, and a strong sense of responsibility. Someone who understands the responsibility of a clean, well-structured tech infrastructure, the importance of data security in healthtech, and how to build a robust, secure, and scalable architecture.

The Challenge: Zero-to-One AI ArchitectureAs the CTO, the priority is to architect a system that can secure early funding and scale seamlessly internationally. The immediate priority will be taking ownership of our MVP. Specifically:

• Architect the Data & Inference Engine: Design and build an intelligent, context-aware engine that accurately parses and synthesises high volumes of data and literature to power our core product experience.
• Implement the "Glass Box" Standard: In line with the strict requirements of the EU AI Act, we need to ensure our algorithmic decision-making is 100% interpretable, limiting hallucinations, ideally by implementing OCR and allowing every platform recommendation to be securely auditable and traced back for full transparency.
• Embed Regulatory Rigor from Day One: You will architect our cloud infrastructure and data pipelines to strictly adhere to German health regulations, GDPR, and the high-security thresholds required by global enterprise and medical partners.
• Build the Engineering Culture: As we secure funding, you will transition from hands-on MVP architecture to building an engineering team and defining technical requirements for our future iOS/Android apps.

The Ideal PartnerI am looking for a real partner who brings energy and drive to the team and product, and who wants to create a successful product.   

• Location & Language: Based in (or willing to commute frequently to) Hamburg. Fluent in German and English.
• Experienced Builder: You have 5+ years of senior engineering experience and have successfully taken a software product from concept to a live, scaled production environment before. (Previous founder or early-startup engineering leadership experience is highly preferred).
• Proven AI Experience: You have practical, hands-on experience building AI agents, specifically utilising RAG and multiple knowledge bases, and implementing OCR.
• Deeply Responsible: You possess a high sensitivity to data privacy, encryption, and the extreme sensitivity required when handling health data.
• Strategic & Low Ego: You act with integrity, operate with transparency, and build with business value, risk mitigation, and long-term valuation in mind.