Co-Founder & CTO (Equity-Based)

Every travel company knows what a traveler booked. Almost none knows who that traveler is, what they want from the trip, or what they will need next.EDEN is building the traveler-side intelligence layer that closes that gap, starting in Saudi Arabia. We are looking for the technical co-founder who will build it, from the first line of code.ABOUT EDENEDEN is an AI-powered Traveler Intelligence Platform. We work B2B2C: we help travel partners (agencies, hotels, airlines, experience providers) understand, convert and retain their travelers through consented traveler profiles, explainable matching, and recommendations that know where the traveler is in their trip.We are not a booking site and not a consumer social app. Our defensibility comes from a traveler intelligence dataset that compounds with every trip, network effects between travelers, partners, and opportunities, and a trip-stage engine that knows when a recommendation is useful rather than noise.Where we are, honestly:- Stage: pre-seed. The product is not live yet.- Pilot evidence: with a premium travel partner, 73 travelers sourced through HEC Paris alumni networks, 13 consented business referrals delivered, and 71% of travelers who shared their travel plans accepted to explore a business offering based on them.- Clean slate: there is no legacy codebase. You define the architecture and the stack.Small numbers, real signal. We would rather show you that than a slide of logos.WHAT YOU WILL BUILDEDEN is designed as six decoupled, API-first product layers: Traveler Experience, Traveler Intelligence Engine, AI Matching Engine, SWIFT, Partner Marketplace, and Admin & Analytics. Each layer exposes a contract and none reaches into another layer's storage.At the core is the Trip State Machine. Every traveler moves through eight states: Dreaming, Planning, Booked, Traveling, Arrived, Active, Returning, Completed. We model this probabilistically: each traveler carries a confidence score across all states, and the system has to work when there is no confirmed booking.Responsibilities are deliberately separated:- The Trip State Machine says where the traveler is.- SWIFT, our Strategic Traveler Intelligence Framework, decides what should happen next.- The Opportunity Engine knows what options exist: people, partners, events, experiences.- The Matching Engine ranks and selects, and every result comes with a human-readable explanation.The MVP is rule-based where rules are enough; ML state prediction comes once there is data to justify it. Mobile is Android-first. Traveler data is consented and handled under Saudi PDPL from day one.YOUR FIRST 12 MONTHSMonths 0-3:- Architecture and API contracts for the six layers defined- Company-owned repositories, cloud and CI/CD in place- Rule-based Trip State Machine and traveler profile service runningMonths 3-6:- Android MVP in the hands of pilot partners and their travelers- Explainable matching v1 in productionMonths 6-12:- Match-to-meeting conversion measured end to end- PDPL-compliant consent and data layer reviewed- Technical due-diligence pack ready for the seed round- First engineering hires planned against the raiseRESPONSIBILITIES- Own the architecture, technical roadmap and every build-vs-buy decision- Deliver hands-on across backend, mobile and data. For the first 6-9 months, you are the engineering team- Build the intelligence layer: traveler profiles, state confidence, matching and explanations- Embed security, privacy and PDPL compliance by design- Run infrastructure, DevOps and on-call until there is someone to share it with- Own the technical narrative with partners and investors, including due diligence- Hire and lead the engineering team once we raiseQUALIFICATIONSMust-haves:- You have personally built and shipped production systems used by real users, and can walk us through the parts that were yours- You still write code every week and want to keep doing so for the next two years- Strong backend and API design: modular services with clear contracts- Mobile delivery experience, ideally Android- Practical experience with recommendation, ranking or ML systems, enough to know when a rule beats a model- A track record of shipping the smallest version that answers the question, then iterating- You push back on scope, on founders and on your own ideas when the evidence says so- You can explain technical trade-offs to partners and investors without jargonNice-to-haves:- Travel tech, marketplaces or two-sided platforms- Probabilistic modeling or recommender systems in production- Data privacy regimes (PDPL, GDPR) in practice, not just on paper- Experience building in Saudi Arabia or the wider GCC; ArabicWHAT WE OFFER- Co-founder equity, vesting over 4 years with a 12-month cliff- An equity-based role through the pre-funding stage- Remote, within Saudi Arabia, the USA, and Europe.- Full architectural ownership from zero, and a real seat on product, fundraising, and strategy- Founders with working networks across Saudi telecom, travel partners and the HEC Paris alumni communityHOW WE WORKEverything built for EDEN belongs to EDEN from day one: repositories, cloud accounts and credentials sit under company-owned accounts, and IP assignment and confidentiality are signed before work starts. We say this up front because clear ownership protects the co-founder as much as the company.THIS ROLE IS NOT FOR YOU IF- You need a market salary from month one- You want to design the architecture and hand implementation to others- You want a funded team and a finished roadmap waiting for you- You would rather build the enterprise version before the MVP proves demandHOW TO APPLYApply here with links to systems you personally built and a line on which parts were yours. Please answer the screening question: we read every answer, and it matters more than the CV.