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I will be the first technical employee of an early-stage startup. I don't have a ton of experience (so something like CTO would look bad and misrepresent me) but I will be doing all the software development at first and leading development when we expand the team. I've been given the freedom to pick my title.

I know that the title doesn't matter a lot, but I still need to pick one. Any advice?

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I'd choose Co-Founder. – frenchie Dec 20 '12 at 14:31
If he is a founder (not just a first hire) then I would add it. Founder / Lead Developer. – jimg Dec 20 '12 at 16:21

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up vote 9 down vote accepted

Lead Developer sounds appropriate. Here is an interesting post about this very topic.

This way, you can either grow into the CTO position or into Sr. Developer, depending on your aspirations.

If you read the CTO job requirements, you'll find that many competent developers don't want to follow that path (can't blame them).

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Thanks! I will be going with that. It's straightforward and not too presumptuous. – robamaton Dec 20 '12 at 1:28
+1 for providing indispensable link. – Pradeep Dec 20 '12 at 14:58
up vote 1 down vote

In a similar position during the first dotcom boom I picked "Head Techie". It's probably my favourite job title of my career ;-)

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