Four people who have each stood on a different side of the same problem
One of us developed formulations and knows the workshop where a shelf life is set from the memory of the previous batch. One has run institutions where the bill for an analysis competes with the monthly result. One has sold to industrial clients for two decades. One managed a fleet of two thousand vehicles and knows that data is worth nothing until it turns into a decision
The gap we walked into
Spain has about twenty-seven thousand food manufacturing companies. Three quarters of them employ fewer than ten people and cannot keep a microbiologist, and the obligation to justify a shelf life contains no exemption by headcount
A large company solves this with an in-house quality department. A small one does not solve it at all, and that gap between what the law requires and what a cheese dairy can afford is the whole reason for the product
The workaround worked
Set fifteen days where twenty-eight were achievable, keep the margin generous and sleep soundly. Over-caution cost money quietly, in write-offs and lost distribution, and nobody counted it
Both exits closed
In April the obligations on food loss became fully applicable, in July the regime of proof for Listeria was tightened. Overstating a shelf life is a safety risk, understating it is now waste, and the only defensible position is the justified figure in between
Expertise as a subscription
We move microbiological competence out of expensive consulting and into software, and we finish the calculation into a document the customer puts on the inspector's desk. That last step is what nobody else was doing
Every function of the company has a person behind it
Four founders, four areas of responsibility that do not overlap, and no function left to be picked up by whoever has time
Open a card to see the education, the working history and what specifically each of them brings into the product
The competence map, function by function
A filled circle marks the person accountable for the function, an outlined one marks support. Select a row to see what that accountability rests on
Barcelona was chosen on four business functions, not on the weather
The customers, the scientific partner, the sales channel and the engineering talent all sit inside an hour of each other, and at a contract value measured in hundreds of euro a month that geography decides whether the model works at all
The customers are here
Catalonia is the centre of meat processing in Spain, and dry-cured and cooked meat products are among the categories with the most demanding justification and the highest willingness to pay. The commercial team reaches a customer after an hour on the road rather than a flight
The scientific partner is here
One of the leading European centres of research in food safety and meat technology, a network of technology centres and a strong university tradition. Validation of the correction layer, access to experimental data and scientific credibility for the documents we issue all depend on it
The sales channel is here
The largest industry trade fair in Spain, the largest wholesale food market in Southern Europe with its innovation centre, and clusters of meat processing, packaging and catering. The target market physically assembles in the city where the company sits
The engineering talent is here
The largest engineering labour market in Spain with a high share of international specialists, which is what makes the hiring plan for the platform realistic rather than hopeful
The regulation that creates the demand is pan-European, so a product that has solved the problem in Spain transfers to Portugal, Italy and France without rebuilding its regulatory core. The team comes from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Nigeria, and the Mediterranean is the horizon where the same problem is sharper and no solution exists
Four rules we would rather lose a customer than break
A shelf-life document is read by an inspector, and once by a lawyer if something has gone wrong. That shapes how the product is allowed to behave
Conservatism runs one way only
A model whose systematic deviation points towards underestimating pathogen growth is not admitted for use, whatever accuracy it achieves elsewhere. Where the data is uncertain, the calculation takes the least favourable option and the dossier says so
A person signs, not an algorithm
The calculation is performed by the customer, and the regulatory conclusion is issued under the responsibility of our compliance specialist, whose name and qualification stand in the audit trail. For the highest risk category the signature of the scientific director is mandatory
Limits are printed, not hidden
A category that has not been calibrated is calculated with a widened interval and a larger margin, and that is stated in the document rather than smoothed over. Beyond the range where a model is established we refuse to extrapolate and offer a route instead
A recipe belongs to the person who wrote it
Recipes and control results are a trade secret: isolated by tenant, encrypted, and entering the training set only anonymised and only where there is a contractual basis. Consumer data is kept to the minimum that the calculation actually needs
Lead platform engineer
The scientific director writes the specification of the computational core, and this person owns its implementation. It is a strong practising engineer's job, not a layer of management
Salary and options, on site in Barcelona, working directly with the founding team
What the role owns
- Architecture of the platform and the implementation of the computational core
- Data infrastructure, versioning of models and reproducibility of every calculation
- Protection of personal data and isolation of customer circuits
- The PRO and RETAIL web interfaces and the mobile application
What we are looking for
- Someone who has built a system where a wrong number has consequences, and who tests accordingly
- Comfort with a scientific codebase and with people who write specifications in equations
- Enough product sense to keep an interface usable by a quality specialist with no IT department behind them
Talk to the people who built it
Manufacturers, laboratories, technology centres, consultants and chains all reach the same four people, and the answer comes from whoever actually owns the question
Conversations happen in Spanish, Catalan, English, French and Arabic