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Location: Remote / Distributed
Compensation: Unpaid initial phase; equity participation in for-profit entity + long-term leadership role
Start: As soon as possible
About Civil Democracy
Civil Democracy is an ambitious attempt to rethink democracy for the 21st century. It is a response to the polycrisis of our time—political polarization, democratic inefficacy, climate paralysis, and growing civic disengagement. The project develops a new democratic model that enables large-scale, meaningful participation, responsibility, and collective decision-making beyond the limitations of traditional representative systems.
Civil Democracy already exists as a conceptually mature model and an early-stage platform, currently implemented in a non-scalable and partially dysfunctional WordPress setup. The next step is decisive: rebuilding the platform as a scalable, SaaS-capable system, laying the technical foundations for a long-term vision of a distributed, people-steered democratic network.
To do this, we are looking for a founding CTO.
The Role
As CTO, you will take full ownership of the technical transformation of Civil Democracy. This is not a maintenance role and not a typical startup CTO position. It is a foundational architecture role at the intersection of technology, governance, and social innovation.
Your initial mandate is to:
• Design and lead the complete technical rebuild of the Civil Democracy platform.
• Move from a fragile, non-scalable prototype to a robust, modular, and scalable SaaS architecture.
• Prepare the system for long-term evolution toward distributed and user-steered governance, including high participation, transparency, and resilience.
• Make early, high-leverage architectural decisions that will shape the project for years.
You will work directly with the founder (a political scientist and democracy theorist) and gradually help assemble and lead a technical team as resources become available.
Key Responsibilities
• Define the overall technical vision and architecture of the platform.
• Select and justify the core technology stack (frontend, backend, databases, hosting, security).
• Replace the current WordPress-based system (while maintaining its basic functionality as long as necessary)
• Design for scalability, reliability, and security from day one.
• Translate democratic and deliberative concepts into clear technical requirements.
• Establish development standards, documentation, and workflows.
• Prepare the platform for future integrations, APIs, and distributed governance features.
What We Are Looking For
This role is for a very specific type of person.
Technically, you should have:
• Strong experience in web application architecture and scalable systems.
• Proven ability to design and build SaaS platforms.
• Solid understanding of security, data integrity, and privacy by design.
• Comfort making early-stage architectural decisions with incomplete information.
• A hands-on mindset: you are willing to build, not only supervise.
Personally, you should:
• Be motivated primarily by mission and impact, not short-term compensation.
• Have a genuine interest in democracy, civic tech, or systemic societal change.
• Be able to work with ambiguity, limited resources, and a long time horizon.
• Be willing to make an unpaid upfront investment of time and expertise.
• Value intellectual honesty, responsibility, and long-term thinking.
This role is not suitable if you are looking for:
• Immediate salary.
• A purely commercial startup.
• A narrowly defined engineering task.
• A short-term or low-risk engagement.
Compensation & Structure
• Initial phase: unpaid, based on mutual trust and shared commitment.
• Medium to long term:
o Equity participation in the for-profit branch of Civil Democracy.
o CTO-level leadership role as funding is secured.
o Influence over one of the most ambitious civic technology projects currently in development.
The project is intentionally structured to balance public-good ambition with financial sustainability, without compromising its core democratic vision.
Why This Matters
Civil Democracy is not “just another platform.” It is an attempt to build the institutional infrastructure required for societies to regain agency, responsibility, and collective problem-solving capacity in an age of fragmentation.
If successful, the technology you build will not merely scale users but scale democratic capacity worldwide.
How to Apply
If this resonates with you, please send:
• A short introduction outlining your background.
• A brief statement explaining why this project matters to you.
• Links to relevant projects, repositories, or architectural work (if available).
Applications and inquiries can be sent directly to Hanno Scholtz, hanno.scholtz@civil-democracy.org.