Founding Chief Technology Officer (CTO) / Technical Co-Founder

Founding Chief Technology Officer (CTO) / Technical Co-Founder

Company: Droppey

Location: Remote initially

Employment type: Full-time

Compensation: 9,000–15,000 PLN/month equivalent + meaningful founder equity

Equity: 3–8%, depending on experience, commitment and level of technical/founder ownership

Relocation: Potential Poland / EU relocation as the company scales

Company Description

Droppey is building enterprise software for governed autonomous physical work.

Our core product, Droppey Mind, is designed to help enterprises coordinate and govern autonomous work across real operational environments.

As businesses increasingly adopt autonomous mobile robots, service robots and other intelligent physical systems, they need software that can help manage how autonomous work is initiated, coordinated, supervised and verified.

Droppey is building infrastructure for that emerging operational layer.

Our initial focus includes retail and intralogistics, with broader applications across warehousing, healthcare, hospitality and other operational environments.

Droppey is based in Poland and is currently at an early stage, building toward enterprise pilots and commercial deployment.

Role Description :

We are looking for a Founding CTO / Technical Co-Founder to take long-term ownership of Droppey’s technical direction and engineering execution.

This is a hands-on founding role, not a management-only CTO position.

You will work directly with the Founder & CEO, help shape the technical architecture, contribute directly to production engineering and gradually build the engineering organisation around the platform.

You will join an existing early technical foundation and will be expected to evaluate it critically, improve it where necessary and help turn it into reliable enterprise software.

Key Responsibilities

• Own Droppey’s technical strategy and architecture

• Lead hands-on development of the core software platform

• Write, review and ship production-quality code

• Build reliable, secure and scalable backend systems

• Lead integrations with relevant enterprise and autonomous technologies

• Make infrastructure, cloud and deployment decisions

• Establish engineering standards and development practices

• Own technical reliability, observability and security

• Make pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions

• Recruit and eventually lead the engineering team

• Work closely with the Founder & CEO on product and company strategy

• Support technical conversations with customers, partners and investors when required

Technical Background

We are looking for strong experience in several of the following:

• Backend and distributed systems

• Event-driven or real-time architectures

• Production API design

• Cloud infrastructure

• Databases and data infrastructure

• Containers and modern deployment environments

• Security and identity systems

• Edge or IoT systems

• Enterprise software

• Robotics or autonomous-system integrations

Experience with technologies such as Python, Go, Rust, TypeScript/Node.js, Java or C++, PostgreSQL, Docker, Kubernetes and major cloud platforms is relevant.

Experience with robotics, AMRs, ROS/ROS2, fleet systems, autonomous systems, industrial automation or edge computing is highly valuable but not mandatory.

You do not need to match every technology listed.

We care more about your ability to architect, build, ship and lead than matching a keyword checklist.

What We’re Looking For

You should:

• Have personally built and shipped complex production software

• Be comfortable remaining hands-on technically

• Have strong systems and architecture judgement

• Understand production reliability and security

• Be comfortable operating in an early-stage company

• Be able to make good technical decisions with incomplete information

• Be willing to challenge assumptions and take ownership

• Be capable of eventually recruiting and leading a strong engineering team

• Communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Want genuine founder-level responsibility

Experience in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial software, logistics technology, enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity or related fields is a strong advantage.

Compensation & Equity

This is a founding-level role with both cash compensation and meaningful ownership in Droppey.

Cash compensation: 9,000–15,000 PLN/month equivalent, depending on experience, location, commitment and company financing stage.

Founder equity: 3–8%, depending on technical ownership, experience, full-time commitment and long-term responsibility.

For an exceptional candidate joining as a genuine technical co-founder and taking substantial long-term ownership of Droppey’s technology and engineering organisation, a different founder-equity structure may be considered.

Equity will normally be subject to 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff.

Location

India / Remote initially.

We are especially interested in exceptional engineers based in:

Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Delhi NCR and Mumbai.

Candidates elsewhere in India and Europe are also welcome to apply.

Potential relocation to Poland / EU can be discussed as the company grows.

Why Join Droppey?

Autonomous systems are moving from isolated machines toward increasingly complex enterprise environments.

Droppey is building software infrastructure for how enterprises manage and govern that transition.

The company is early enough that the Founding CTO will have genuine influence over the architecture, engineering culture and long-term technical direction.

This is not a role for someone looking to inherit an established engineering organisation.

It is for someone who wants to build one.