Job Title: Fractional CTO
Location: Remote / GCC compatible
Type: Fractional / Part-time
Commitment: 8 hours per week, flexible scheduling
Compensation: Monthly retainer (discussed during screening)
About the Role
Local is a QR-based dine-in payments platform live across the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Our stack is Laravel (backend), NextJS (frontend), and AWS (infrastructure). The engineering team is 7-8 people, reporting directly to the founders.
We are looking for a Fractional CTO to provide senior technical leadership and architectural guidance as we scale our product, integrations, and platform reliability across the GCC.
This role is focused on technical direction, not day-to-day engineering management. You will work closely with the founders and engineering team to assess the current architecture, identify the highest-leverage technical improvements, and guide stronger engineering decisions as the company grows.
This role is ideal for someone who has seen scale before, can quickly identify where the real technical bottlenecks are, and can help shape a stronger long-term technical foundation without needing to be involved in every sprint or ticket.
What You Will Own
- Provide senior guidance on system architecture, integration strategy, and technical risk, with a focus on unblocking our POS integration pipeline and improving integration scalability
- Review the current platform and identify the highest-priority improvements to reliability, performance, and maintainability
- Help founders and leadership make better decisions on technical trade-offs, roadmap feasibility, and resourcing
- Act as a senior thought partner on how the engineering organization and technical foundations should evolve as the business scales
- Step in selectively on high-stakes architectural questions where experienced judgment is needed
What Success Looks Like
- In your first 30 days, you understand the current platform, the major delivery and reliability risks, the key integration bottlenecks, and the gaps in the existing technical setup.
- In your first 60 days, you have helped clarify technical direction, improved architectural decision-making, and given the founders and engineering team sharper visibility into where the biggest risks and opportunities lie.
- In your first 90 days, the company has stronger technical direction, better senior engineering judgment, and a clearer path for improving reliability, integration scalability, and engineering maturity.
What We Are Looking For
- Strong track record as a senior engineering leader, CTO, VP Engineering, or equivalent
- Deep experience with backend systems, APIs, platform architecture, and production environments
- Experience with integration-heavy systems involving payment gateways, POS platforms, webhooks, or third-party APIs
- Ability to quickly assess technical bottlenecks and guide teams toward stronger solutions
- Experience advising founders or senior leaders on technical trade-offs and engineering scaling decisions
- Strong judgment, clear communication, and comfort operating in startup environments
Nice to Have
- Experience in payments, fintech, or other transaction-heavy products
- Familiarity with Laravel, NextJS, or AWS-based architectures
- Experience with observability, CI/CD, and modern engineering practices
- Experience helping early-stage or growth-stage companies strengthen technical foundations and senior hiring decisions
