Lead Engineer

Founding Software Engineer | AI Startup | 0-to-1 Product Development

I'm partnering with an exciting early-stage AI startup that's developing intelligent decision-making systems to solve complex, real-world problems.

Unlike traditional AI companies focused primarily on chatbots or generic LLM applications, this team combines Large Language Models (LLMs), mathematical optimization and algorithmic solvers to build practical, verifiable solutions to complex business challenges.

With a small team of AI Research Scientists already in place, they're now looking to hire their first Founding Software Engineer to turn cutting-edge research into scalable, production-ready products.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a hands-on engineer who enjoys building things from scratch, thrives with autonomy and wants to play a meaningful role in shaping a company's engineering direction.

💻 What will you be working on?

You'll take ownership of the core product engineering function, including:

• Building scalable backend services and APIs that integrate LLMs, algorithmic solvers and complex data workflows.
• Developing production-ready applications from research prototypes.
• Designing systems to support asynchronous, long-running and compute-intensive workloads.
• Building practical frontend interfaces that allow customers to interact with AI-driven solutions.
• Owning cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, monitoring and reliability.
• Establishing engineering standards and best practices for future team growth.

🔎 What are we looking for?

• 3–8 years of software engineering experience , ideally with strong backend and full-stack capabilities.
• Strong experience with Python, Node.js, Go or similar backend technologies .
• Proven experience building and deploying production-ready applications independently.
• Experience taking a product, feature or technical solution from 0 to 1 .
• Strong API development, database and system architecture fundamentals.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure ( AWS, GCP or Azure ), CI/CD and containerisation.
• Practical frontend development experience with React, Vue, Svelte or similar .
• Strong technical judgement, problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently.

Highly advantageous:

• Hands-on experience building applications using LLMs, AI agents or agentic workflows .
• Previous experience as an early-stage or founding engineer.
• Experience translating AI/ML research into production systems.

🌟 Who would thrive in this role?

Someone who genuinely loves building software, enjoys solving difficult technical problems and is comfortable taking ownership without needing a large engineering team around them.

You don't need to be an AI researcher. The team already has strong AI research expertise. What they need is an exceptional hands-on engineer who can turn innovative ideas into reliable, usable products.

If you're excited by the opportunity to build something from the ground up, work directly with founders and help shape the future of an ambitious AI startup, I'd love to hear from you.

📩 Apply directly or reach out for a confidential conversation!