ZOVU · Remote · Async across time zones

We're looking for a Lead Developer who will take ownership of the day-to-day technical quality of ZOVU: the codebase, architecture, code reviews and how the development team builds and ships software. You'll work directly with the founder, write production code yourself, guide the other developers and make the technical calls that keep the platform reliable as we move into restaurants across Europe and the US.

About ZOVU

Most restaurants run on a stack of disconnected tools: one for the till, one for bookings, one for loyalty, one for the staff rota, and a spreadsheet holding it all together. ZOVU replaces that with one operating system for hospitality: point of sale, reservations, kitchen display, staff planning, loyalty, inventory and back-office reporting on a single platform.

Restaurants pay us no monthly fee. We earn a small margin on each transaction, so we only make money when our restaurants do.

We're selling in the Netherlands, the UK and the US. On top of the platform we're building a consumer app with restaurant discovery, events, a video food feed, a social layer and in-app ordering, launching first in Los Angeles and the Netherlands.

What you'll own

The codebase. Stay hands-on, write production code and make sure the platform remains understandable, maintainable and ready to scale.

Code quality. Review pull requests, challenge weak implementations and set clear standards for testing, architecture and releases.

Technical guidance. Help our developers make good implementation decisions, unblock difficult problems and raise the technical level of the team.

Architecture. Make pragmatic decisions across our POS, backend, web apps and mobile products without rewriting things that already work.

Reliability. A POS that fails on a Friday night costs a restaurant real money. Help make sure offline behaviour, monitoring, releases and incident handling are built properly.

Payments and data. Orders, payments and inventory need to stay correct. You'll help protect transaction integrity, multi-tenant isolation and data consistency across the platform.

Delivery. Work with product and design to turn restaurant workflows into software the team can actually ship.

Our stack

A Flutter/Dart tablet POS, a Node and TypeScript backend with Prisma and PostgreSQL on Google Cloud Run, React web apps, and a React Native kitchen display, all in one multi-tenant monorepo.

What's already built

You won't start from a blank page. The POS already handles table service, courses, split bills, tips, refunds, discounts, printer routing and staff permissions, alongside reservations, a kitchen display, staff clock-in, reporting and a first version of loyalty. Next on the roadmap: inventory, NFC loyalty cards, a phone POS and the consumer app.

You're probably a fit if you

Have built and shipped production software and are still comfortable spending a large part of your time coding

Have strong experience with TypeScript/Node and relational databases such as PostgreSQL

Have reviewed other developers' code and know how to give useful technical feedback

Have guided or mentored other developers, even if you've never formally managed a large team

Can make architecture decisions and explain the trade-offs without over-engineering

Understand production concerns such as retries, idempotency, concurrency, testing, monitoring and data integrity

Take ownership of problems instead of waiting for someone else to decide what needs to happen

Do your best work async, without anyone checking in on you

Bonus points

You know Flutter/Dart or have shipped serious mobile applications

You've built offline-first or sync-heavy systems

You've worked with payments, POS systems or other transaction-heavy products

You've designed multi-tenant SaaS platforms

You've worked in or with restaurants, bars or hotels

You know your way around PCI DSS, GDPR or Google Cloud

What we offer

Real technical ownership over a product already being built

A team you can guide while remaining hands-on yourself

A working product and a clear roadmap, not a pitch deck

Direct access to the founder and influence over technical decisions

Fully remote, async work

Compensation: we offer only equity

Where we are

We're early and fundraising. The product is built; now it needs to go into restaurants and become reliable enough for real service every day.

If you want a role where you mainly manage people and sit in meetings, this isn't it.

If you want to write code, make technical decisions, review what the team ships and take real ownership of a growing codebase, it probably is.

How to apply

Send your CV, a link to something you've built, and a few sentences on each of these to [email protected]:

1. Tell us about a production system or feature you personally built that you're proud of. What part did you own?
2. Tell us about a time you reviewed or changed another developer's approach because you thought it would cause problems later. What did you change and why?
3. Describe a difficult production problem involving things like failed requests, duplicate events, payments, concurrency, offline behaviour or inconsistent data. How did you solve it?

We read every answer. Applications without them won't be reviewed, and we value your own words over polish.