Founding Head of Engineering

About Serv

Serv Technologies is building the identity layer for the drive-thru.

Our platform combines edge hardware, computer vision, cloud software, and restaurant integrations to help restaurants recognize returning vehicles, understand guest behavior.

We are an early-stage restaurant-technology company founded by recent Duke graduates. We recently closed our initial funding and are preparing to launch pilots with national restaurant brands.

The Role

We are looking for a Founding Engineering Lead to become Serv’s full-time technical leader and own the day-to-day development of our platform.

This is a highly hands-on role with significant responsibility and influence. You will work directly with the founders to set technical priorities, build and improve the product, lead restaurant integrations, support live deployments, and help grow the engineering team.

The ideal candidate combines strong technical judgment with the urgency and resourcefulness required at an early-stage startup. You should be comfortable moving between architecture, coding, troubleshooting, customer conversations, and team leadership.

For the right person, this role has the potential to grow into a long-term Head of Engineering or C-suite position.

Responsibilities

• Own Serv’s engineering roadmap, architecture, and day-to-day technical execution.
• Lead development across edge devices, cloud infrastructure, backend systems, APIs, data pipelines, and customer-facing software.
• Lead integrations with restaurant tech platforms.
• Build reliable systems capable of operating across thousands of restaurant locations.
• Support pilot deployments and troubleshoot real-world software, hardware, and infrastructure issues.
• Help recruit, manage, and mentor additional engineers as the company grows.

Minimum Requirements

• 3+ years of professional software-engineering experience.
• Strong backend, systems, and cloud-infrastructure capabilities.
• Experience developing APIs or integrating with third-party platforms.
• Experience owning major technical projects or leading other engineers.
• Ability and willingness to remain highly hands-on and be very committed.
• Comfort working in a fast-moving early-stage startup environment.

Preferred Experience

Experience in one or more of the following areas is especially valuable:

• Restaurant, retail, hospitality, payments, loyalty, POS, or ordering technology.
• Edge computing, computer vision, IoT, or hardware-connected software.
• Early-stage startups or product build out.

This role includes a very competitive salary, meaningful equity, and the opportunity to become one of the most important early leaders at Serv. In-person or hybrid work is strongly preferred, with flexibility for an exceptional candidate. Travel will be required at points.