NeedTech Labs · 3 weeks ago
CTO & Co-Founder, Cybersecurity SaaS Venture | Pre-Seed | Equity-Only
United States
Full-time
Remote
Director/Executive
8+ years expNeedTech Labs is a stealth-mode cybersecurity SaaS venture focused on building a patent-pending platform to enhance bot management and forensic transparency. The CTO & Co-Founder will be responsible for the complete technical roadmap, leading the development of adaptive AI and blockchain technologies to create a regulator-defensible SaaS asset.
MarketplacePublishingSaaSOnline Portals
No H1B
Hiring Manager
Daniel Katz
Responsibilities
Own the end-to-end technical roadmap from MVP through production scale, spanning adaptive AI engine, blockchain anchoring layer, real-time inference pipeline, and cloud-native platform architecture
Architect the adaptive machine learning core: online learning pipelines, adversarial robustness, drift detection, feature engineering across client-side and server-side signals, behavioral biometrics integration, and continuous synthesis of emergent bot fraud vectors and global adversarial patterns
Architect the blockchain anchoring layer: permissioned ledger selection and deployment (Hyperledger Fabric, Quorum, Besu, or equivalent), cryptographic anchoring of classification verdicts and provenance explanations, Merkle-tree batching strategies for cost and throughput optimization, smart contract design for audit-trail integrity, and key management architecture appropriate to regulator-grade chain-of-custody requirements
Design the explainability layer connecting adaptive AI verdicts to blockchain-anchored provenance — the technical bridge that makes the dual-architecture thesis defensible. This is the platform's core defensibility and must withstand both academic scrutiny and adversarial litigation contexts
Architect the cloud-native platform: Kubernetes orchestration, Docker containerization, Terraform infrastructure-as-code, multi-region auto-scaling, microservices decomposition, and pipeline orchestration at enterprise traffic volumes
Lead security engineering from inception: SOC 2 Type II readiness, ISO 27001 alignment, PCI DSS attestation pathway, GDPR Article 22 automated-decisioning architecture, and FedRAMP roadmap consideration
Architect the real-time inference pipeline: sub-100ms decision latency across edge and origin deployment topologies, WAF and CDN integration (Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, AWS CloudFront), and graceful degradation under adversarial load
Drive IP execution: continuation filings, claim-chart development around the adaptive-AI-plus-distributed-ledger claim space, prior-art analysis, FTO assessment, and defensive portfolio expansion
Lead technical engagement with design-partner enterprises, validating adaptive AI efficacy metrics and blockchain-anchored audit-trail integrity
Build and lead the founding technical team across ML engineering, distributed ledger engineering, security engineering, platform engineering, and SRE
Serve as the principal technical voice in investor diligence, CISO technical due diligence, analyst engagement, and strategic partnership conversations — with particular ownership of the dual-architecture defensibility argument
Qualification
Required
8+ years in B2B SaaS engineering leadership with substantive experience shipping production systems in cybersecurity, fraud prevention, identity verification, or adjacent enterprise security categories
Direct production experience with adaptive machine learning systems — online learning, model drift management, adversarial robustness, real-time inference at scale, and ML observability. Research-only ML backgrounds without production shipping experience are not qualified
Direct production experience with distributed ledger architecture — Hyperledger Fabric, Quorum, Besu, Corda, or equivalent permissioned-ledger frameworks. Pure 'interest in blockchain' without shipping experience is not qualified
Demonstrable architectural fluency across cloud-native infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, multi-region auto-scaling, service mesh, and observability tooling
Working experience navigating enterprise security compliance frameworks: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and GDPR automated-decisioning architectural implications
Direct experience with at least one of: client-side bot detection, server-side behavioral analytics, application fraud signal engineering, or account takeover defense architecture
Cryptographic engineering depth sufficient to architect the anchoring layer: hash trees, digital signatures, key management, and the practical engineering of chain-of-custody systems
Direct experience contributing to patent portfolios at the intersection of AI/ML and distributed systems
Zero-to-one leadership track record: a prior CTO, founding engineer, or technical lead role at a cybersecurity, fraud, or enterprise SaaS venture
Graduate degree (Ph.D. preferred) in computer science, machine learning, distributed systems, cryptography, or adjacent field
Preferred
Prior exit (acquisition or IPO) as a technical founder in cybersecurity, fraud prevention, identity, or enterprise blockchain — HUMAN Security, PerimeterX, Shape Security, Forter, Sift, Signifyd, Riskified, Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Elliptic, Fireblocks, or comparable lineage
Direct operating experience inside a tier-one cybersecurity, fraud, fintech, or enterprise blockchain corporate (Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Cloudflare, Akamai, Imperva, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Adyen, ConsenSys, R3, IBM Blockchain)
Named inventor on granted patents in adaptive ML, adversarial machine learning, bot detection, fraud prevention, or distributed ledger applications
Published or patent-cited record in NeurIPS, ICML, USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, NDSS, or equivalent venues
Hands-on experience with explainable AI frameworks (SHAP, LIME, integrated gradients) and engineering explainability into production decisioning systems
Operating familiarity with edge inference architectures (Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda@Edge, Fastly Compute@Edge)
Familiarity with AI assurance and auditing — model cards, datasheets, NIST AI RMF technical implementation, ISO/IEC 42001 architectural alignment
Experience with formal verification, zero-knowledge proof systems, or verifiable computation frameworks
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