About ZOVU

ZOVU is building the Operating System for the modern restaurant.

Today, restaurants still rely on a fragmented collection of systems to run their business. One provider handles Point of Sale, another manages payments, another takes care of reservations, another runs loyalty, while staff planning, kitchen operations, analytics, marketing, and customer engagement often live in completely separate platforms.

We believe that should be one system.

ZOVU is bringing Point of Sale, payments, reservations, loyalty, Kitchen and Bar Displays, staff management, analytics, marketing, the Customer App, and Back Office together inside one connected Restaurant OS.

Our business model is different too. Instead of building our company around expensive monthly SaaS contracts, ZOVU operates primarily on a transaction-based model. We grow when our restaurants grow.

We are still at an early stage, which means the company, the product, and the technical foundation are evolving quickly. We operate as a fully remote international team and are building ZOVU with the ambition to scale globally.

The Role

We are looking for an entrepreneurial Founding Lead Developer who wants to become one of the key technical people behind ZOVU.

This is not a traditional development position where you receive a backlog, complete assigned tickets, and wait for the next task.

You will work directly with the founder and our existing development team and take significant ownership over how ZOVU is architected, built, scaled, secured, deployed, and maintained.

You will be expected to understand the existing codebase, challenge technical decisions when necessary, improve the architecture where required, and make sure the platform can support the complexity of a real restaurant environment.

That means thinking beyond individual features.

A payment cannot fail during a busy Friday evening. Orders need to reach the kitchen immediately. Reservations need to synchronize correctly. Restaurant data has to remain accurate. The POS has to stay fast. Integrations need to be reliable. And as thousands of restaurants eventually use the same infrastructure, the architecture needs to be ready for that growth.

You will help build that foundation.

As ZOVU grows, we expect this role to develop into broader engineering leadership. For the right person.

An Equity-Only Opportunity

This is currently an equity-only position.

There is no fixed salary attached to the role at this stage.

Instead, you will receive an ownership stake in ZOVU. The exact equity percentage, vesting structure, responsibilities, commitment, and future compensation arrangements will be discussed and agreed before joining.

We want to be completely transparent about this from the beginning.

This position is therefore not designed for someone who is simply looking for their next developer salary. It is designed for someone who wants to join early, take meaningful ownership, help build the company, and participate in the long-term upside if ZOVU succeeds.

We are looking for someone who thinks more like an owner than an employee.

The Technology You Will Be Working With

The current ZOVU codebase is primarily built in Dart and TypeScript.

Dart currently represents mainly of the codebase, while TypeScript represents second. The remaining platform includes CSS, PostgreSQL and PLpgSQL, JavaScript, and Kotlin.

Our infrastructure runs primarily on Google Cloud.

For this reason, experience with Dart, Flutter, and TypeScript is particularly valuable.

You do not need to be an expert in every technology we currently use, but you should be comfortable entering an existing full-stack architecture, understanding how its different components interact, and becoming technically responsible for it.

Beyond individual programming languages, we care heavily about your understanding of software architecture, PostgreSQL, APIs, authentication, cloud infrastructure, real-time systems, integrations, deployment processes, security, scalability, and production reliability.

What You Will Actually Be Responsible For

Your responsibility goes far beyond writing code.

You will help oversee the technical foundation of the complete ZOVU ecosystem, including our Point of Sale, payment integrations, reservations, loyalty systems, Kitchen and Bar Displays, staff management, Customer App, Back Office, analytics, marketing systems, restaurant integrations, databases, APIs, and cloud infrastructure.

Some days you may be designing an architectural solution for real-time order synchronization. Other days you may be reviewing another developer's code, investigating a production issue, improving database performance, discussing a new payment integration, restructuring part of the platform, or deciding how a completely new ZOVU module should be built.

You will also help establish how engineering works inside ZOVU.

As the team grows, we want you to help define our development standards, code-review practices, technical documentation, deployment processes, security standards, and overall engineering culture.

We do not want someone who only wants to manage developers.

This is a hands-on technical leadership position.

You should still enjoy opening the codebase, solving difficult problems yourself, building features, reviewing pull requests, debugging production systems, and shipping software.

The Experience We Are Looking For

For this position, we are primarily looking for someone with at least 5 years of professional software development experience, including approximately 2 years or more in a Senior Developer, Lead Developer, Technical Lead, or similar technical ownership role.

You should already have experience building and maintaining real production applications rather than only prototypes or personal projects.

We expect you to understand how to design scalable systems, structure APIs, work with relational databases, deploy software into production, manage cloud infrastructure, work professionally with Git, and debug complicated problems when systems do not behave as expected.

You should be comfortable making technical decisions without needing constant direction.

Strong professional experience with Dart / Flutter and TypeScript would make you especially relevant for the role because these technologies form the majority of our existing platform.

Experience with PostgreSQL, Google Cloud, CI/CD, authentication, application security, real-time systems, and scalable backend architecture is highly valuable.

At the same time, we do not believe someone's ability can always be measured by a number of years.

If you have fewer than five years of experience but have already independently architected, built, deployed, and owned complex production systems, we still want to hear from you.

The Background That Would Make You Especially Interesting

Restaurant technology is a demanding environment, and experience in similar industries would immediately stand out.

If you have previously worked with POS systems, payments, fintech, payment terminals, PSP integrations, hospitality software, restaurant software, multi-location platforms, real-time applications, offline-first systems, or complex SaaS products, you will probably understand many of the challenges we are solving.

Previous startup experience is also valuable.

We particularly like developers who have experienced the journey from an early MVP to a real production product, because they understand the balance between moving quickly today and avoiding technical decisions that make tomorrow impossible.

Experience leading developers, mentoring engineers, helping recruit technical talent, or establishing engineering processes would also be valuable as the team expands.

How We Like to Work

We believe strong developers perform best when they have ownership.

You will not have someone watching your screen or telling you exactly how every technical problem needs to be solved.

We want you to understand the goal, challenge assumptions, propose solutions, and take responsibility for the result.

That freedom also requires discipline.

Remote working only works when people communicate clearly, keep their commitments, document important decisions, and take responsibility when something goes wrong.

We move quickly because we are a startup, but moving quickly does not mean building carelessly.

We want to create an engineering culture where speed and quality reinforce each other.

Sometimes the correct solution will be a sophisticated architecture built for scale. Sometimes the correct solution will be something extremely simple that solves the problem today without creating unnecessary complexity.

Knowing the difference matters.

The Type of Person We Want

You are probably a strong fit if you naturally think beyond your assigned piece of code.

When you see a problem, you want to understand why it exists.

When you see an architectural weakness, you want to improve it.

When a specification is incomplete, you can ask the right questions rather than waiting for someone to tell you exactly what to do.

You enjoy building products where technology has a direct connection to the real world.

In our case, that means understanding that the software you build may be processing payments, sending orders into kitchens, managing reservations, synchronizing restaurant data, or supporting employees while a restaurant is operating at full capacity.

Reliability is therefore not simply an engineering metric.

It directly affects whether a restaurant can operate.

You should enjoy that level of responsibility.

Why Join ZOVU This Early?

Joining ZOVU today is fundamentally different from joining a mature technology company.

Many of the decisions that will eventually define the company have not been permanently made yet.

That gives you the opportunity to meaningfully influence the architecture, infrastructure, development standards, technical roadmap, team structure, and ultimately the product itself.

You will work directly with the founder instead of operating through layers of corporate management.

You will have the freedom to challenge technical decisions and propose better approaches.

And because this is an equity position, the intention is that your contribution and the success of the company are aligned.

If ZOVU grows into the global Restaurant OS we are building toward, you will have been one of the people responsible for creating its technical foundation.

Life at ZOVU

We are building an ambitious company without trying to imitate the structure of a large corporation.

We do not believe great technology requires endless meetings, complicated reporting structures, or layers of approval.

We believe it requires talented people who care deeply about what they are building.

We work with urgency. We communicate directly. We take personal responsibility. We are transparent when something is not working. And we are comfortable changing direction when we discover a better solution.

There will be difficult technical problems.

There will be features we have never built before.

There will be systems that need to change as the company grows.

There will be moments where you have to figure something out without having a perfect roadmap in front of you.

For the right person, that is exactly what makes the opportunity interesting.

Ready to Build ZOVU?

We are not looking for someone who simply wants another software development position.

We are looking for someone who wants to become one of the technical owners behind ZOVU and help build the foundation of a company from an early stage.

If you are excited by ownership, technical freedom, startup speed, difficult engineering problems, and the opportunity to build something substantial, we would like to hear from you.

Send us your CV, GitHub or portfolio, and a short introduction telling us what you have built, what you have technically owned, your experience with Dart / Flutter and TypeScript, and why joining an equity-based startup interests you.

[email protected]