Firefly Spark
About Firefly Spark on Instagram)
Firefly Spark ends Gen Z loneliness by making real-life friendship one tap away.
- April 2025 soft launch: 800+ downloads by week 2, 350 active users
- Community reach: 8.5 k Instagram followers plus partners with >1 million combined audience
- Feedback is clear: concept loved, experience needs a cleaner rebuild (v2) with smarter matching and stronger trust features.
Our outgoing lead engineer is stepping back into an advisory role ( 8 h / week). We’re now looking for a technical founder to take full ownership of v2-architect it, ship it, and scale it to the next growth milestones.
What you will own
- Architecture & delivery – design and implement the entire v2 stack (mobile, backend, CI/CD, analytics).
- Technical quality – establish testing, monitoring, and security standards that can scale to tens of thousands of users.
- Team building – recruit and mentor a small volunteer engineering/design group already in our pipeline.
- Product strategy – work with the CEO on roadmap, metrics, and fundraising; present technical diligence to investors.
- Outcome call – use agreed KPIs to confirm growth potential or recommend an orderly wind-down.
You’re a strong fit if you
- Have shipped a consumer mobile product 0 1 (React Native, Flutter, or similar).
- Operate full-stack – comfortable with schemas, cloud functions, CI/CD, and runtime monitoring (Firebase/GCP or equivalent).
- Lead through code quality – you’ve set up review processes and automated tests in production teams.
- Can work equity-only for up to six months (no salary until funding).
- Prefer clear decisions to endless pivots – you welcome measurable goals and act on the results.
Nice-to-haves: Expo EAS, PostHog/Firebase Analytics, TypeScript, Gen-AI/Vertex AI, security & compliance experience.
Compensation & Ownership
- Founder-level equity, issued up-front. We’ll agree on a substantial double-digit stake during the offer discussion. Shares vest monthly over 12 months, with full acceleration on any funding or liquidity event.
- True technical ownership. You’ll control architecture, release cadence, code quality, and infrastructure-no layers of approval.
- Built-in user pipeline. Campus partners (> 1 M combined reach) and ongoing promo campaigns are already lined up; your code is the last piece needed to turn that audience into engaged, long-term users.
How to apply
Email with subject “Co-Founder / CTO – Your Name “ and include:
- A brief note on why an equity-only, high-ownership role matches your goals.
- Two links showing your engineering work (GitHub, shipped app, technical talk, etc.).
- Your earliest realistic start date.
We answer all serious applications within 72 hours. The selection path is:
- 30-minute intro call
- 60-minute live technical session
- Offer discussion (equity, vesting, KPIs)
If you’re ready to take full technical responsibility-accepting both the upside of significant equity and the discipline of clear results-we’d like to meet you.
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