CPTO - Chief Product & Technology Officer

Chief Product & Technology Officer — Kono.AI 📍 California-based preferred | Remote US considered |💰 Competitive salary + equity package (structured to flex — more equity for less salary and vice versa, negotiable based on your situation)

The opportunity

Kono.AI is building the first AI-native marketplace for high-value industrial metals.

Inconel, titanium, high-end steel and aerospace-grade aluminum are the background of the high-tech industrial economy, essential for companies in space exploration, defense, commercial aviation, medical device manufacturing, racing, yachting and other sectors. Southern California is US hub of this market, home to Space X, Northrop Grummon, Boeing and thousands of distributors and specialized CNC manufacturers.

This is a stealth-stage company backed by industry veterans, at an inflection point. We have critical supply relationships assembled, early demand validation, a launch-ready platform and a clear sprint to go-live. We have experienced technical leadership in place — what we don't have is the right founding-team CPTO.

The industrial supply chain is one of the last major sectors untouched by real digitalization. Not because the problem is too hard — but because the AI tooling to solve it didn't exist until now. We're building at exactly the right moment, and we need a founder-level operator who get's incredibly excited by that.

The role

You will be the founding CPTO — owning product, engineering, and technical architecture from day one. In the early stage, that means operating as a hands-on builder with AI agents as your primary leverage. As we scale, you'll hire, build and lead the engineering and product teams.

This is a role for someone who knows how to manage engineers and gets in the weeds themselves — the product thinker, the technical architect, and the builder, all in one. You'll need to be comfortable being the most technical person in the room and the most product-oriented one at the same time.

What you'll own

* Full technical architecture and stack decisions — you inherit a working GCP/Firebase/React nOpenSearch/Stripe platform and evolve it

* Product strategy and roadmap — running discovery, prioritization, and iteration cycles without a dedicated PM in the early stage

* AI-native development infrastructure — agentic workflows, LLM integration, and the internal tooling that lets a small team move like a large one

* UX and product experience — enough design sensibility to prototype and validate without a full-time designer initially

* Team building — knowing when to hire, who to hire, and how to structure engineering and product as we grow

What we're looking for

Non-negotiables:

* 10+ years spanning senior engineering and product — you've architected systems and shipped products, not one or the other

* Deep, practical fluency with LLMs, AI-first development, and agentic workflows — built with these tools, not just read about them

* You know where vibe coding works and where it creates risk — you can move fast without accumulating architectural debt

* Strong product philosophy — SVPG, Jobs to Be Done, Continuous Discovery, or equivalent; you have a framework and can defend it

* You've operated as a solo builder and as a team leader — you know both modes and when to shift between them

Strong signals:

* Experience building two-sided marketplaces or platforms with supply and demand dynamics

* Design chops — enough to own wireframes, prototypes, and UX decisions without a dedicated designer at the first moment

* Genuine excitement about industrial sectors and real-economy businesses — this isn't a new consumer app; the right person will find that more interesting, not less

What we offer

* Competitive salary, structured to flex — open to a higher equity / lower salary trade-off depending on your conviction

* Meaningful early equity in a company with a clear path to becoming category-defining infrastructure for the global specialty metals trade

* Full ownership of the technical and product roadmap with direct access to the founding team

Who this is not for

* Engineering managers who haven't written production code recently

* Product leaders without technical depth

* Anyone who thinks "AI-first" means adding a ChatGPT wrapper to an existing workflow

To apply or refer

DM directly or reach out to the Kono team at [email protected]. We're evaluating candidates on a rolling basis.

If you know someone who fits — a technical co-founder type at a transition point who wants to build something real — the introduction is welcomed.