Chief Technology Officer

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER (CTO)Architect of the Universal Exchange Layer for the Energy GridLondon, UK | Full-time | Hybrid (3+ days in office)THE OPPORTUNITYEvery era of technology produces a layer everything else is built on. Payments have one. Communications have one.The energy grid - the machine that decides how fast the AI era gets built - doesn’t have one yet. And the whole world is feeling it: 283 GW sits stuck in the UK connection queue, more than 2,600 GW in the US - twice the country’s installed capacity - and the $600bn+ a year now flowing into AI data centres waits 5-10 years for power that already exists.We think this is a market problem, not an engineering one. The capacity exists and the demand exists, but there is no mechanism for pricing one against the other. Open Banking solved the same problem for bank data, and an entire industry was built on top of it.The convergence of AI, FinTech, and energy is not a prediction - it is inevitable. The future is energy and information transacted at speed.ZEAL is building that layer for the grid - the energy and data exchange layer. This is the seat that builds it: founder-grade scope, a platform designed from first principles, and a market whose ceiling is the global energy transition itself.ABOUT ZEALZEAL is building Open Banking for the Energy Grid - the universal exchange layer connecting DNOs, NESO, grid operators, and thousands of energy assets (data centres, C&I, BESS) into a single unified platform. The data infrastructure that turns idle grid capacity into fast, flexible connections.The ZEAL platform - codenamed Gluon - runs the full market cycle: Model → Price → Connect.

• Model - ingest live facility and network data (metering, power, cooling, constraint zones); map how much load every conductor and substation can safely carry, hour by hour; run what-if simulations across capacity, curtailment, and flexibility.
• Price - split the connection into a firm tier and a conditional tier and price each: a two-tier quotation engine that moves from Level 1 estimate to Level 2 bankable quote in weeks, not months.
• Connect - issue the Flexibility Passport: a portable, auditable connection artefact with day-ahead operating limits. The asset goes live on a flexible, non-firm connection and stays grid-powered over 99% of the year.Our mission: democratise the energy future - abundant, intelligent, and open to all.THE PROBLEMA UK-starting problem. A global one in waiting.
• Connection queue: 700+ GW pre-reform to 283 GW post-reform. Oversubscription persists.
• Lead times: 5–10 years to connect a data centre. Capital flows to faster jurisdictions.
• Utilisation gap: 65–80% of contracted grid capacity sits idle - roughly 10 GW of untapped C&I flexibility in the UK today, and ~£70bn of system savings from reinforcement it makes unnecessary.The bottleneck is not power. It is information.The grid has no order book: nobody can see, price, or trade available capacity. Idle grid capacity is one of the largest stranded assets in the industrial world - and the same structural gapexists in the UAE, Japan, Australia, and the US, wherever AI demand outruns grid architecture designed for a static century.Whoever builds the layer that makes that capacity visible, priced, and tradable becomes the standard. That is the company we are building.WHY NOW - REGULATION, DEMAND, TRACTION
• Regulatory tailwind: Connections Reform prioritises flexible connections; the MHHS mandate makes half-hourly settlement data universal; RIIO-ED3 pushes DNOs toward flexibility and innovation. The rules of the market are being rewritten in ZEAL’s favour - on a clock.
• Live commercial engagement: pilot engaged with a Tier-1 UK data-centre operator - pricing model validated, chief executive has confirmed written support.
• Network-side validation: two live grid-innovation programmes now in motion - a national transmission operator and NESO engaged as co-leads, a leading UK DNO as lead licensee - backed by an independent innovation-funding application and a live utility innovation-allowance proposal, both anchored to the same confirmed Tier-1 pilot site, going live from January 2027.
• Scale path: from a single anchor site, to 100 MW across sites, to a gigawatt - the pilot validates the per-site figure, the platform makes it repeatable.THE ROLEAs CTO you join the Leadership Team and own the architecture, build, and deployment of ZEAL’s platform. You translate the mission into deeply technical execution: scalable, intelligent, secure systems that power the consent- based data layer of the grid and orchestrate the AI-driven energy economy.You will be responsible for:
• Defining ZEAL’s end-to-end technical vision and the 12–24 month product and platform roadmap.
• Leading engineering across data ingestion, standardisation, simulation, pricing, and the API surface.
• Bridging digital infrastructure and physical energy systems - real DNO-to-data-centre interoperability.
• Setting the technical blueprint ZEAL exports from the UK to the UAE, Japan, Australia, and the US.This is a builder’s seat. You are in the codebase for the first 12–18 months, and everything you architect becomes the reference design for every market ZEAL enters.RESPONSIBILITIESPlatform Architecture & Delivery (50%)
• Architect ZEAL’s API-first market infrastructure: ingestion from DNO source systems and facility systems (metering, power, cooling), standardisation, simulation, and the two-tier pricing engine that turns raw grid data into bankable quotes.
• Build secure, low-latency engines for real-time telemetry, consent-based data exchange, and connection pricing - and the Flexibility Passport pipeline: portable, auditable, contract-grade artefacts with day-ahead operating limits.
• Own bank-grade security as a product feature - end-to-end encryption, authentication, FAPI-grade consent management. We sit between regulated networks and critical infrastructure: trust is the moat.
• Embed ML as a first-class capability - feature stores, real-time inference, model governance, scenario simulation at scale.
• Build AI-native from day one. Agentic development, AI-accelerated research, prototyping, and design are how a small team here ships at the pace of an organisation ten times its size. You ship faster because you master the tools, not in spite of them.
• Ship production code.Technology Strategy & Roadmap (20%)
• Own the systems architecture and platform roadmap; make the build-vs-buy and defensibility calls that compound.
• Run sprints and technical workshops with the team - set the agenda, break down the work, ship to priorities.
• Translate regulation and market signals (Connections Reform, MHHS, RIIO-ED3) into product decisions and prioritisation.
• Act as the technical authority in regulator, DNO, and partner conversations led by the CEO - credible with network operators, NESO, Ofgem, and data-centre operators when called in.MVP & Prototyping for Investors and Clients (20%)
• Build and ship working prototypes that turn the ZEAL thesis into something investors can see and clients can test - fast.
• Own the demo platform: live data, working simulations, screen-ready for any board, VC, DNO, or procurement meeting.
• Convert pilot conversations into signed contracts on the strength of platform performance.
• Iterate weekly on what investors and clients actually respond to. Speed of learning is the metric.Team & Culture (10%)
• Recruit and grow a top-tier engineering team across platform, back-end, data, and AI/ML - post-Seed.
• Set engineering principles and review standards; build a culture of shipping.
• Run weekly and monthly retrospectives on work shipped and lessons compounded.THE IDEAL CANDIDATEYou are a deep-tech systems builder and market-infrastructure thinker. You have led platform engineering in regulated, multi-stakeholder domains, and you think in protocols and platforms, not products. You have built and shipped at the intersection of energy, grid, AI, Open Banking, and platform infrastructure.Core capabilities
• Designed and shipped multi-tenant, API-first data platforms with consent, data quality, and versioning as first-class practices.
• Time-series data engineering at scale - telemetry, half-hourly settlement, real-time streams.
• AI/ML platform design - feature stores, real-time inference, simulation engines, model governance.
• Cloud-native engineering (AWS or GCP), Kubernetes, IaC, event-driven microservices, Python and TypeScript.
• Bank-grade security and consent architecture as first-class concerns.RELEVANT EXPERIENCEDomain depth in at least two of the following:Energy & Grid
• Worked with DNO, TSO, or NESO data - ingested it, modelled it, or built products on top of it.
• Fluent in the UK regulatory direction of travel - Connections Reform, MHHS, RIIO-ED3, flexibility markets.
• Hands-on with at least one of: load forecasting, grid simulation, demand-response, flexibility trading, constraint management.Data Centres & C&I
• Hyperscale or colocation data-centre experience, or site-level integration with industrial and DC systems - BMS, SCADA, DCIM, or equivalent telemetry.
• Understands uptime SLAs and the commercial reality of asking a large operator to curtail.AI, ML & Data Platforms
• Architected a production AI/ML platform - real-time inference, model governance, reproducibility.
• Forecasting, optimisation, or simulation in commercial deployment, not research.Open Banking & Market Infrastructure
• Built or integrated Open Banking / PSD2 platforms, FinTech or Tier-1 bank deployments - or trading, clearing, and exchange infrastructure.
• Multi-tenant, API-first platforms shipped from zero to production that other engineers built on.
• Consent-based data exchange and FAPI-grade security as first-class concerns.Track record - most of the following
• Architected and shipped a production platform from zero in a regulated, fragmented industry.
• Turned heterogeneous, messy data from multiple uncooperative source systems into a queryable API product.
• Built or operated systems at bank-grade security - end-to-end encryption, audit posture, real incident response.
• Led a senior engineering team from MVP through commercial launch and into multi-customer scale.
• Owned the technical relationship with regulators or procurement teams - credible on architecture, security, and roadmap.
• Made a hard pivot or re-architecture call that cost short-term velocity for long-term defensibility - and was proven right.Strong signals (any of)
• Founding-team or CTO experience at a platform company that became standard infrastructure in its sector.
• Open-source contributions, technical writing, or standards-body participation in energy, grid, Open Banking, or data protocols.
• Cross-jurisdiction deployment experience - two or more of the UK, US, EU, UAE, or Asia.WHAT YOU WILL BUILD
• The technical foundation of the universal exchange layer for the energy grid, DNOs, and energy assets.
• Systems that unlock stranded gigawatts and coordinate real-time DNO-to-asset transactions.
• The export blueprint that takes ZEAL from the UK to the UAE, Japan, Australia, and the US.
• The protocol infrastructure of the global energy economy - with your architecture at its core.CULTURE FIT IS NON-NEGOTIABLEThe wrong hire at this stage breaks the team for years. The right one compounds it. Our seven principles:1.Great Energy - we bring and share great energy.2.Be Genius - we believe everyone is a genius at something.3.Thinker & Doer - deep thought and bold action, in the same person.4.Intention & Attention - every action deliberate, every detail matters.5.Trust = Speed - high trust enables bold action and faster decisions. Low trust kills companies.6.First-Principles Thinking - we reason from first principles, not received wisdom.7.Make a Dent in the Universe - our work will change the future of energy for billions.If you want to build something great that matters and scales to the lives of billions of people, this place is for you.COMPENSATION
• Competitive package - base salary, founder-grade equity (EMI options), and step-ups at Pre-Seed and Seed close.
• Leadership Team seat with joint sign-off on product, technology, and roadmap.