Job description
Syntony • Durham, NC, London, UK, Singapore, San Francisco Bay Area, Brussels, Belgium
CTO
Syntony · Remote · Durham, NC · Team growth planned across SF · DC · London · Brussels · SingaporeThis remote founding role leads engineering for Syntony's evaluation tooling and governance products. The CTO will work directly with the founder and remain involved in product delivery. Compensation is equity-heavy while Syntony remains pre-seed and cash-constrained.
About Syntony
Syntony evaluates frontier and production AI systems and helps clients govern the risks those evaluations uncover. Our engineering supports both parts of the work: running reproducible tests and carrying findings into control and retesting workflows. We work with frontier labs, public-sector organizations, and companies deploying AI.
The name Syntony comes from early radio and means being tuned to the same frequency. It reflects the operating problem we focus on. Evaluation, legal, operations, and leadership often work on different timelines and with different evidence; our products are designed to keep a finding intact as it moves between them.
About the role
We are hiring a CTO as a founding technical partner. The role covers the product suite, from evaluation infrastructure to the governance products that use its evidence.
The CTO will work with the founder on product priorities and client requirements. Hiring and financing strategy are also part of the job.
Hands-on technical leadershipMake the architecture decisions and contribute directly to product delivery while building the team.
Work across disciplinesYou will work closely with red-team researchers and policy analysts whose requirements shape the products.
Evaluation and governanceThe technical challenge is to connect adversarial testing to governance records that preserve a finding through control ownership and later review.
Built for client workThe systems support live engagements, so their outputs must be reliable and understandable to technical and non-technical reviewers.
ScopeWhat you will own
Evaluation infrastructureBuild red-team harnesses, evidence schemas, trace and logging systems, and reproducibility tooling for adversarial evaluations.
GovTune AIDevelop the product that turns red-team traces into draft governance findings and review materials.
ResonanceDevelop interactive system and attack-path mapping. Each path remains linked to the test record, the responsible team, the response, and the next test.
Risk index pipelineBuild pipelines that ingest and score thousands of incidents, then surface risk signals at the sector level.
Engineering hiring and standardsRecruit engineers and define how the team reviews its work, establishes reliability, and decides when a release is ready.
Strong candidates will have
- 8+ years of experience shipping production systems in industry, research, or both.
- Experience leading engineering teams, including responsibility for technical direction and hiring.
- The ability to work across ML evaluation workflows, backend systems, data engineering, and structured extraction.
- Clear written and verbal communication with both technical and non-technical reviewers.
- The judgment to make progress while a problem and its requirements are still being defined.
- A record of shipped work, supported by code, products, or technically substantive papers we can review.
Bonus
- Background in AI safety, ML security, adversarial robustness, or governance tooling.
- Experience with evaluation frameworks (Inspect, OpenAI Evals, custom harnesses).
- Familiarity with agentic systems, tool-use sandboxing, or autonomy evaluation.
- Prior work with frontier labs or in regulated industries (defense, finance, healthcare).
- Independent research, open-source contribution, or technical communication.
How we evaluate
We look at relevant work first. Technical judgment and communication also matter. Lead with the strongest example of something you have designed and shipped.
- Application review and short async conversation.
- Scoped technical discussion or work sample closely related to the role.
- Two technical conversations.
- Reference conversations.
- Offer.
The offer structure
Equity-heavy by designThis is a founding technical leadership role with meaningful equity. The grant will reflect the company's stage and the scope of the role, including responsibility for Syntony's technical foundation.
Cash-constrained until financingNear-term cash compensation is limited until financing closes. We will state the available amount and expected time commitment before an offer is accepted.
Founder-level ownershipYou will set technical direction and product architecture. You will also establish hiring and engineering standards and represent the technical strategy in financing conversations.
Path after the roundIf financing allows, the role can move to a conventional full-time executive package that includes salary and benefits. That change is contingent on the company's financing and will be discussed explicitly.
Research and publicationWhere client terms and confidentiality permit, you can publish under your own name. Technical work may also support public demonstrations and papers, as well as reusable evaluation infrastructure.
Open conversationCash compensation, equity, responsibilities, and expected time commitment will be agreed with the selected candidate. We will state the constraints and terms directly.
Location
This is a remote role. Syntony is based in Durham, North Carolina, and plans to grow the team across San Francisco, Washington DC, London, Brussels, and Singapore. Proximity to a current or planned hub would help with occasional in-person work, but it is not required.
ApplyApply for the CTO role
Email hello@syntonyresearch.ai with the subject line "CTO | [Your Name]", or use the form below. Include a brief note, links to your work, and one thing you would change about how AI evaluation is currently practiced.
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.
Syntony is committed to building a diverse team. We evaluate candidates on demonstrated ability and judgment, not credentials or pedigree. We strongly encourage applications from candidates whose backgrounds may not perfectly match the description. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability. We may use AI tools to assist with parts of the hiring process, including initial application review. Final hiring decisions are made by humans.