Starting a software development company—especially one that plans to support both open-source and proprietary products—means you need to balance technical, business, and community roles early on. With a small team, people will likely wear multiple hats, but you still need clear ownership of responsibilities.

Here’s a structured breakdown of essential roles you should assign at the start:

Leadership & Business Operations

• CEO / Managing Director (Vision & Strategy)
  • Sets company direction, manages business relationships, defines long-term goals, and ensures alignment between technical and business objectives.
• Operations/Finance Lead
  • Handles incorporation, contracts, accounting, legal compliance (licenses, IP, open-source obligations), and funding strategy.

Product & Project Management

• Product Manager
  • Defines what to build, manages roadmaps, coordinates between development and business. Prioritizes open-source community needs vs proprietary customers.
• Project Manager / Scrum Master (can be combined with above in small teams)
  • Ensures deadlines are met, tasks are tracked, and communication is clear.

Engineering & Development

• Lead Architect / CTO
  • Owns technical vision, system architecture, technology stack choices, and ensures code quality/security.
• Software Engineers (Backend, Frontend, Full-Stack)
  • Build the actual products. Early on, assign engineers flexibly by strengths, but establish code ownership areas (e.g., APIs, UI, DevOps).
• DevOps / Infrastructure Engineer
  • Manages cloud, CI/CD pipelines, deployment, security hardening, and scalability. In a tiny team, the Lead Architect may cover this role initially.

Community & Customer Engagement

• Developer Relations / Community Manager
  • Especially critical if you’re building open-source. They handle documentation, GitHub issues/PRs, forums, Discord/Slack, and evangelize your projects.
• Customer Support / Success
  • For proprietary products, ensures paying customers are supported. Early on, engineers and PMs may share this responsibility.

Design & User Experience

• UX/UI Designer
  • Focuses on usability, branding, and interface design. If absent, developers often improvise—but UX debt builds fast, so don’t skip this role for long.

Quality & Security

• QA / Testing Lead
  • Owns testing strategy (unit, integration, regression, load testing). Initially, engineers can test their own code, but someone should champion test coverage.
• Security Lead (can be combined with QA/DevOps)
  • Ensures open-source compliance, handles data protection, monitors vulnerabilities (CVE patching, dependency scanning).

Sales & Growth (Proprietary Focus)

• Business Development / Sales Lead
  • Builds client relationships, handles licensing deals, and develops pricing models for proprietary solutions.
• Marketing Lead (often combined with community early on)
  • Drives awareness, builds brand identity, and manages social presence.

Practical Tips for a Small Team

• Double-up roles: In a 4–6 person team, people will wear multiple hats. Example: one person might be CTO + DevOps + Security, while another is Product Manager + Marketing + Community.
• Assign ownership, not titles: Make sure every domain (tech, product, community, business) has a clear owner, even if one person holds several roles.
• Document role boundaries: Write a short one-pager per role (responsibilities + decision rights) to avoid overlap and confusion.
• Plan for scaling: Define which roles to split out first as you grow (usually DevOps, QA, and Sales).

Minimal viable role setup for a 4–5 person company:

CEO/Business Ops

CTO/Lead Engineer

Product/Project Manager

Developer(s)

Community/Marketing/UX (can be one person at first)

📊 Org Chart for a Software Development Company

Startup Phase (4–6 People)

(Minimal viable team, overlapping responsibilities)

                   CEO / Managing Director
                            │
        ┌───────────────────┴───────────────────┐
        │                                       │
 CTO / Lead Engineer                  Product / Business Lead
        │                                       │
   ┌────┴────┐                           ┌──────┴──────┐
   │         │                           │             │
Developer(s) DevOps / QA        Marketing & Community Manager
                                   Customer Success (shared)

Growth Phase (20–30 People)

(More structured, role specialization begins)

                              CEO
                               │
        ┌──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┐
        │                      │                      │
       CTO              COO / Operations        VP of Product
        │                      │                      │
   ┌────┴─────┐           ┌────┴─────┐           ┌────┴─────┐
   │          │           │          │           │          │
Eng. Leads  Security   Finance / Legal    Product Managers
   │          │                │                  │
   │          │        HR / Recruiting     Project Managers
   │          │                              UX/UI Designers
   │          │                           Technical Writers
   │
   ├── Backend
   ├── Frontend
   ├── Mobile
   └── Infra / DevOps

⚖️ Scaling Strategy

• First hires after core team: QA/Test Engineer, dedicated DevOps, and a Community/Customer Support specialist.
• Second wave hires: Product Manager, Sales Lead, and dedicated UX/UI Designer.
• Third wave (approaching 30 people): Split roles into leads (Backend Lead, Frontend Lead, etc.), formalize Security, and add HR/Finance staff.