CTO​/Technical Lead - AI Legal SaaS Platform

Position: CTO / Technical Lead - AI Legal SaaS Platform
Position:
Fractional CTO / Technical Lead

Engagement:
Part-time (15-20 hours/week) or Full-time

Location:

13, Ring Road, Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi - 110024

Experience:

8+ years in software development, 3+ years in technical leadership

Domain:
SaaS, AI/ML, Legal Tech preferred

About the Project

We're building an AI-powered SaaS platform for Indian legal professionals featuring intelligent document analysis, legal drafting, and workflow automation. Think Harvey.ai meets Indian law. This is a greenfield project with a 3-month timeline to MVP.

Your mission:
Architect, build, and lead the technical execution from concept to production launch.

Your Responsibilities

1. Technical Architecture & Strategy

- Design end-to-end system architecture (frontend, backend, AI/ML, infrastructure)
- Choose optimal tech stack balancing speed, scalability, and budget
- Define data architecture: relational DB, vector DB, document storage strategy
- Design API architecture and microservices boundaries (if applicable)
- Create technical roadmap aligned with business milestones (MVP in 1-2months)
- Make build vs. buy decisions (e.g., use OpenAI vs. self-hosted models)
- Architect for multi-tenancy, security, and compliance from day one

2. AI/ML Strategy & Oversight

- Define AI architecture: RAG pipeline, vector database, embedding strategy
- Decide LLM approach:
OpenAI/Claude API vs. fine-tuned open-source models
- Guide AI engineer on model selection, fine-tuning on Indian legal corpus
- Design prompt engineering framework and context management for 4,000-page documents
- Architect playbook system (firm preferences, risk rules) integration with AI
- Ensure AI outputs are explainable, cite sources correctly, and meet legal standards
- Implement bias checks, disclaimers, and ethical AI practices
- Optimize for cost (LLM API costs can spiral quickly)

3. Team Leadership & Management

- Hire, onboard, and manage a team of 3-5 developers: AI/ML Engineer, NLP/Document Processing Engineer, Backend Engineer, Frontend Engineer (React/Next.js), (Optional) Dev Ops/Cloud Engineer
- Conduct technical interviews and assess candidate skills
- Assign tasks, set sprint goals, track progress
- Code review and maintain code quality standards
- Unblock team members and resolve technical bottlenecks
- Foster collaboration between AI and backend teams

4. Product Development & Execution

- Break down product requirements into technical tasks and user stories
- Define sprint cycles and ensure timely delivery (Agile/Scrum)
- Prioritize features for MVP: what must ship vs. what can wait
- CTO / Technical Lead - AI Legal SaaS Platform 2
- Work closely with product owner/founder on feature scoping
- Balance speed vs. quality: ship fast but build it right
- Conduct weekly demos and stakeholder updates
- Manage technical debt and refactoring decisions

5. Security, Compliance & Legal

- Implement security best practices:
- End-to-end encryption for legal documents
- Role-based access control (RBAC)
- Audit logging and activity tracking
- Secure API authentication (OAuth 2.0/JWT)
- Ensure data privacy compliance (GDPR, Indian data protection laws)
- Design for cybersecurity: rate limiting, DDoS protection, penetration testing
- Handle sensitive legal data with appropriate access controls
- Set up disaster recovery and backup strategies

6. Infrastructure & Dev Ops

- Choose cloud provider (AWS/Azure/GCP) and set up infrastructure
- Design scalable deployment architecture (containers, serverless, Kubernetes)
- Set up CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment
- Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting (e.g., Datadog, Sentry, Cloud Watch)
- Optimize cloud costs (especially AI inference and storage)
- Plan for horizontal scaling as user base grows
- Set up staging and production environments

7. Integration & Third-Party Services

Integrate with:

- Google Drive, Dropbox (document sync)
- CTO / Technical Lead - AI Legal SaaS Platform 3
- Google Vision API, Tesseract (OCR)
- OpenAI/Claude/Anthropic APIs
- Indian legal databases (SCC Online, Manupatra, Indian Kanoon)
- Payment gateways (Razorpay, Stripe)
- Email (Send Grid, AWS SES), Calendar APIs

Design webhook systems for real-time notifications

Handle API rate limits, retries, and fallback mechanisms

8. Quality Assurance & Testing

- Define testing strategy: unit, integration, end-to-end tests
- Set up automated testing frameworks (Jest, Pytest, Cypress)
- Conduct user acceptance testing (UAT) with beta users
- Performance testing: load testing, stress testing (e.g., 100 concurrent users)
- Security audits and penetration testing before launch
- Bug triage and fix prioritization

9. Documentation & Knowledge Transfer

- Document system architecture, API specifications (Swagger/OpenAPI)
- Create technical documentation for handoff to internal team
- Write deployment guides, runbooks, troubleshooting docs
- Maintain code documentation and best practices guide
- Knowledge transfer sessions with team for post-launch maintenance

10. Post-Launch Support

- Provide 1 month of post-launch support for…