NeedTech Labs · 1 month ago
CTO & Co-Founder for AI Network Intelligence Startup (No Salary, Equity Only, Pre-Seed)
United States
Full-time
Remote
Director/Executive
10+ years expNeedTech Labs is a stealth-mode network intelligence startup focused on developing a patent-pending fault management platform. The CTO & Co-Founder will own the technical roadmap, leading the development of advanced technologies for real-time telemetry and fault detection in complex networks.
MarketplacePublishingSaaSOnline Portals
Hiring Manager
Shalom Daskal
Responsibilities
Own the end-to-end technical roadmap from MVP through production scale, with the MVP delivered within 12 months
Architect the real-time telemetry ingestion pipeline: Kafka-based streaming, temporal windowing, multi-source aggregation across SNMP, NetFlow/IPFIX, sFlow, and streaming telemetry (gNMI/gRPC, OpenTelemetry network signals)
Architect the spectral analysis core: DFT/STFT engines, multidimensional spectrogram projection, normative spectra training, and failure-mode signature taxonomy
Architect the Bayesian particle-filter engine: state-space modeling, particle propagation strategies, likelihood computation, and iterative device-exclusion localization with normalized spectral similarity metrics
Lead GPU-accelerated microservices architecture: CUDA/cuDNN optimization, GPU-resident inference pipelines, Kubernetes orchestration, and cost-efficient scaling under high-telemetry-volume ingestion economics
Architect the cloud-native platform: Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform IaC, multi-region auto-scaling, service mesh, and observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
Lead security engineering from inception: SOC 2 Type II readiness, ISO 27001 alignment, FedRAMP roadmap consideration, and carrier-grade SLA architecture
Drive IP execution in coordination with patent counsel: continuation filings, claim-chart development around the spectral-Bayesian-network-fault claim space, prior-art analysis against incumbent AIOps and NPM portfolios, FTO assessment, and defensive expansion
Lead technical engagement with design-partner enterprises: deep technical discovery, deployment architecture design, validation of MTTD/MTTR metrics, and integration with customer telemetry environments
Engage with network telemetry standards bodies (IETF, OpenTelemetry, MEF, TIP, OCP) and position the platform as a strategic complement to open telemetry standards
Build and lead the founding technical team across signal processing, ML/Bayesian inference, distributed systems, GPU engineering, SRE, and solutions engineering
Serve as the principal technical voice in investor diligence, customer technical due diligence, analyst engagement, and strategic partnership conversations
Qualification
Required
10+ years shipping distributed B2B SaaS at production scale, with substantive experience in enterprise infrastructure, observability, AIOps, NPM, or adjacent enterprise software categories
Direct production experience with signal processing systems — DFT/STFT, spectral analysis, time-frequency methods. Research-only signal processing without production shipping experience is not qualified
Direct production experience with Bayesian inference at scale — particle filters, Kalman filters, sequential Monte Carlo methods, or equivalent probabilistic state-estimation systems. Pure deep-learning backgrounds without probabilistic inference depth are not qualified for this role
Demonstrable architectural fluency across cloud-native infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, GPU-accelerated microservices, service mesh, and multi-region auto-scaling
Direct experience with high-volume telemetry ingestion: Kafka, Pulsar, or equivalent streaming platforms operating at enterprise scale
Working experience navigating enterprise security compliance frameworks: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and ideally FedRAMP architectural alignment
Direct experience contributing to patent portfolios at the intersection of applied mathematics and distributed systems, including claim drafting collaboration and prior-art assessment
Zero-to-one leadership track record: a prior CTO, founding engineer, or technical lead role at an enterprise infrastructure SaaS venture, taking technology from architectural design through production deployment
Graduate degree (Ph.D. strongly preferred) in electrical engineering, signal processing, applied mathematics, statistics, computer science, or a directly adjacent field
Preferred
Prior exit (acquisition or IPO) as a technical founder or early technical leader in network observability, AIOps, NPM, or enterprise infrastructure — ThousandEyes, Kentik, AppNeta, Moogsoft, BigPanda, OpsRamp, Selector AI, Forward Networks, or comparable lineage particularly valued
Direct operating experience inside a tier-one network equipment vendor, observability platform, or carrier R&D organization (Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Nokia Bell Labs, Ericsson, NetScout, Splunk, Datadog, Dynatrace, NTT R&D, AT&T Labs)
Named inventor on granted patents in signal processing, anomaly detection, network telemetry, or Bayesian inference applications
Published or patent-cited record in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, IEEE/ACM ToN, ICASSP, INFOCOM, SIGCOMM, NSDI, USENIX ATC, or equivalent venues — particularly in applied signal processing, network anomaly detection, or sequential Monte Carlo methods
Hands-on experience with GPU programming (CUDA, cuDNN, Triton) and the practical engineering of GPU-resident inference pipelines
Operating familiarity with network telemetry standards: SNMP, NetFlow/IPFIX, sFlow, gNMI, NETCONF, and emerging OpenTelemetry network signal proposals
Background in radar signal processing, sonar, communications systems, or seismology — adjacent disciplines where spectral analysis and Bayesian filtering are mature methodologies and transfer cleanly to network telemetry
Benefits
Co-Founder equity. Material, vesting on standard terms with appropriate cliff and acceleration.
Founder-level participation in subsequent funding rounds.
Company
NeedTech Labs
NeedTech Labs is an AI-first venture platform that aims to revolutionize startup development.
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageLeadership Team
Daniel Katz
Co-Founder & CEO
Shalom Daskal
Chairman Co-Founder NeedTech Labs
Company data provided by crunchbase