Who do we actually need
The founder is now part-time in both scenarios — not driving vision, roadmap, or architecture day to day, for now. That has to land somewhere real, not just get quietly dropped, which is why the Technical Product Manager role below is a week-1 hire with a bigger scope than a delivery-tracking PM, not the month-2 addition it used to be.
Tier 1 · Week 1
Not a second peer to the existing Backend Engineer — this is the tech lead. Owns architecture (with the founder available for occasional sign-off, not daily direction), is the primary reviewer of AI-generated code across the team, and stands up CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and the security baseline in week 1 using AI-assisted scaffolding rather than a dedicated platform hire. The single highest-leverage engineering hire on this list, and the one place seniority is worth a real premium (see Cost).
Elevated from a plain Project Manager, and moved from month 2 to week 1, specifically because the founder going part-time leaves vision and roadmap without an owner otherwise. Owns product prioritization and the two pillars' roadmap, runs delivery coordination, and tracks the cross-team dependencies owed by the GTM/Compliance cofounders (pilot state, e-sig vendor, pilot brokerage). "Technical" matters here: this person needs enough fluency in the Transitional Document and Merchant Integration's actual shape to make real trade-off calls, not just track a board. Priced with a premium closer to the tech lead's than a standard senior rate, given the scope (see Cost).
Brought in early on purpose: this person processes the paperwork, payroll, and onboarding for everyone else joining over the next few weeks, and is the team's administrative point of contact as it grows.
Tier 2 · Weeks 2–4
Starts month 1 in both scenarios — AI-generated code needs adversarial verification from the start, not a testing pass bolted on later. Owns the test pyramid from day one, plus deep adversarial testing on the two pillars and anything money-adjacent.
One designer, engaged as a project/contract, not a full-time hire — a flat project fee (see Cost for the amount), not a monthly salary line. Covers the Transitional Document authoring flow and the Merchant Integration onboarding flow, plus the mobile design system for all 5 portals.
4 new FTE hires (tech lead, Technical Product Manager, QA, HR/Admin), plus the 2 existing engineers, plus 1 project-based designer — 7 people total against a confirmed 8–10 budget headroom. That headroom stays unspent on purpose: neither DevOps/Platform nor a second mobile engineer earned a seat on their own merits, so the room goes unused rather than filled to hit a number. If a real need shows up — a second backend engineer for Full Pilot's 2–3-state jurisdiction workload, a security engineer once there's production traffic to justify it, or a second mobile engineer if native apps for all 5 portals slip — the room is there.
Worth stating directly, since the role changed shape this round. Product Manager alone undersells it — this person also runs delivery and owns the cross-team dependency tracking, not just prioritization. Engineering Manager doesn't fit at all: there's no people-management or hiring scope here, and a dedicated EM layer isn't justified for a 4-person engineering function anyway. Technical Product Manager is the accurate title: product ownership (vision, roadmap, prioritization) plus delivery coordination, with enough technical fluency in the two pillars to make real trade-off calls rather than just track a board.
| Full Pilot | Lean Pilot | |
|---|---|---|
| Founder | Part-time in both, for now — no longer a scenario difference | |
| Tech lead | Senior Backend Engineer #2, in both — owns architecture and DevOps/foundations, no dedicated hire | |
| Vision / roadmap | Technical Product Manager, in both — week-1 hire | |
| Mobile | 1 Flutter engineer covering all 5 portals, in both (flagged risk) | |
| Designer | 1 project-based UI/UX designer, not FTE, in both | |
| QA start | Month 1, with foundations — same in both | |
| Compliance ownership | Other cofounders, in both — not a build-team hire | |
| GTM ownership | Other cofounders, in both | |
| New FTE hires | 4 (tech lead, Technical Product Manager, QA, HR/Admin) + 1 project-based Designer | |