Location: Singapore (Remote considered for outstanding candidates)
Compensation: Significant founder equity; salary commences with funding/milestones
Commitment: Full-time, early-stage co-founder; sweat equity (no salary at inception)
About SnapLens
SnapLens is building a global visual commerce platform—transforming every image into an instant, multi-merchant shopping opportunity. We’re pioneering a new standard for how the world buys, discovers, and monetizes products through visual content, reaching well beyond today’s social or e-commerce apps.
The Role
We’re searching for a Founding CTO ready to fully own and drive SnapLens’s technical vision and product architecture from day one. This is a true co-founder position demanding deep commitment, relentless execution, and personal investment for substantial long-term equity. Early on, there is no guaranteed salary; your success is tied to the technical and business impact you deliver.
Core Technical Skills Required
Computer Vision & Deep Learning:
- Hands-on experience with state-of-the-art object detection and multi-object segmentation (YOLO family, Mask RCNN, EfficientDet, Detectron2, segmentation models)
- Model training, fine-tuning, and optimization for accuracy and inference speed
- Understanding of data annotation, active learning, and model validation
Visual Search Systems:
- Building scalable product/image search engines using image embeddings, similarity search (FAISS/Annoy)
- Scene parsing (detecting multiple products in a single image and matching each to live catalogs)
AI/ML Platform Engineering:
- Deploying and maintaining AI on both cloud and mobile/edge environments
- ML pipeline design, CI/CD for AI, versioning, and performance monitoring
Full Stack Product Development:
- Web/mobile (iOS/Android) application development; integration of AI inference endpoints
- RESTful API/websocket design and integration with external merchant/affiliate APIs
- Experience with scalable architectures, authentication, and analytics
E-Commerce Integration:
- Ingesting/cataloging millions of SKUs from external sources (marketplaces, brand feeds, Shopify, etc.)
- Designing robust, real-time product ingestion, management, and matching APIs
Data, Security, and Privacy:
- Experience with GDPR, PDPA, and strong privacy-by-design practices for user and product data
- Secure payment redirection and basic fraud protection principles
Bonus:
- Prior startup, MVP, or zero-to-one build experience
- Familiarity with creator/affiliate systems or analytics dashboards
- Experience hiring and leading high-performing tech teams
Additional Qualities
- Builder’s mindset: Proven history of building, shipping, and iterating products hands-on, under constraints.
- Ownership mentality: Willing to work intensively (pre-salary) to create both technical and company value.
- Team builder: Ready to recruit, manage, and motivate a world-class engineering organization.
- Candor and adaptability: Comfort with direct feedback, fast pivots, and ambiguity.
- Mission alignment: Motivated by the challenge of defining and scaling a global platform, not just a job or prestige.
Accommodations Provided:
We welcome applications from both Singaporeans and foreign candidates. For exceptional foreign hires, SnapLens can assist with relocation and provide support for housing/accommodation needs. If you’re relocating to Singapore, we’ll help you get settled so you can focus on building with the team. Local candidates are just as welcome, if housing or transition support is needed for you, let us know and we’ll discuss available arrangements.
To Apply
Please share:
- Specific links/examples of platforms, AI/ML systems, or computer vision applications you’ve built or led
- Your role and key contributions for each project
- The most difficult technical or team challenge you’ve solved, and what you learned
- Why a sweat equity, co-founder role at SnapLens appeals to you
Contact: [email protected]
SnapLens is for founders ready to shape the future of global commerce, those who see beyond limitations and are prepared for the ownership, resilience, and drive a landmark startup demands. If you’re energized by high stakes and real impact, let’s connect.
