Founding Engineer - CTO Office

Who are we?

We are Nominal, and we’re building the financial operating system for the most ambitious and fast-growing companies of our generation. We combined big data and AI to disrupt the ERP space that hasn’t changed in the last 25 years - and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. Joining us isn't just about filling a role—it's an unparalleled chance to actively shape the culture and direction of a company that's poised to make a lasting mark. It's an opportunity to dive deep, contribute actively, and embark on what could be the defining journey of your professional life.

Our Team

We are a team of seasoned executives and world-class engineers with a proven track record. Our leadership has been down this road before and our collective experience and insights are now channeled into creating a groundbreaking financial platform. We push our limits and challenge the status quo. We are backed by top VCs alongside prominent industry leaders.

Join our journey

The CTO Office is the innovation and technical backbone of Nominal. This is not a standard product-facing engineering role. As part of this group, you’ll operate at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, innovation, and execution, working closely with the founders and senior leadership to tackle the company’s hardest and most strategic technical challenges.

Responsibilities & Impact

• Act as a founding engineer within the CTO Office, working directly with the founders on core technical initiatives.
• Take ownership of complex, cross-cutting technical problems that span infrastructure, architecture, data, and product.
• Design and build production-grade systems while also leading deep technical explorations, POCs, and evaluations of new technologies, frameworks, and data solutions.
• Drive architectural decisions across core systems, including event-driven architectures, data pipelines, and backend services.
• Lead initiatives to improve scalability, performance, reliability, and developer velocity across the organization.
• Serve as a technical multiplier: unblock teams, support engineers, and help raise the engineering bar through design reviews, mentorship, and hands-on problem solving.
• Balance execution and innovation - roughly 50% hands-on production work and 50% research, experimentation, and forward-looking technical leadership.
• Step into product-facing development when needed, while maintaining a system-level, long-term perspective.
  
  

• 7+ years of experience building and owning complex backend or distributed systems in production environments.
• Proven experience in senior technical roles such as Senior Engineer, Tech Lead, Architect, Staff / Principal Engineer, or Founding Engineer.
• Strong system-level thinking with the ability to design scalable, maintainable architectures end-to-end.
• Deep experience with databases, data modeling, SQL, and event/data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience across the full software development lifecycle - from design and architecture to implementation, deployment, and production ownership.
• High standards for code quality, design clarity, and operational excellence.
• A proactive, entrepreneurial mindset - comfortable operating in ambiguous environments and defining problems as much as solving them.
• Background in startups or high-growth environments.
  
  

• Experience building SaaS platforms in cloud-based environments.
• Design and develop production ready AI/LLM based applications.
• Strong experience with Python.
• Experience with AWS.
• Experience with event or streaming platforms such as Kafka.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Exposure to generative AI technologies and applying them to real-world systems.
• Prior experience in fintech or financial systems.
  
  

• A rare opportunity to help build and define the CTO Office from the ground up.
• Direct impact on the company’s most critical technical decisions.
• Close collaboration with experienced founders and senior leadership.
• Clear growth path into senior technical leadership roles.
• Hybrid working environment.
• Learning budget for conferences, courses, and professional development.
• Free lunches, dinners, and a fully stocked kitchen.
• Work-from-home stipend.