AI Biopharma Startup | Founding Engineer | London (on-site) | £100k–£130K + Equity
About the Company:
We're partnered with an early-stage, London-based AI startup building an AI-powered competitive intelligence platform for the biopharma industry. Their product continuously monitors thousands of clinical, regulatory, and commercial data sources, automatically generating strategic insights tailored to each organisation's pipeline. As a true zero-to-one business, the team is small, highly technical, and deeply product-focused, with strong ambitions to scale into a $100m+ platform. This is a rare opportunity to join at the earliest stage and play a defining role in shaping both the product and the engineering culture.
About the Role:
They are currently seeking a Founding Engineer to join at a pivotal stage, working directly with the founders to build and scale the entire software stack from first principles. This is a highly autonomous role where you'll take ownership and operate across key areas of the system depending on your strengths, whether that's AI/LLM engineering, data infrastructure, or enterprise SaaS architecture. You'll be responsible for building production-ready products, setting engineering standards, and designing the systems, tooling, and feedback loops that enable a small team to move quickly without compromising reliability. This role offers genuine ownership and high autonomy from day one, suited to naturally curious engineers who actively build and experiment in their own time and want to have a direct impact on both product and technical direction.
Responsibilities:
* Building and shipping production-ready features across the platform.
* Designing and implementing scalable system architecture from an early stage.
* Developing AI systems including LLM orchestration, evaluation, and feedback loops.
* Building and optimising data pipelines, ingestion frameworks, and database structures.
* Contributing to multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure, including cloud deployment and security.
* Creating internal tooling, workflows, and development environments to maximise team velocity.
* Working closely with founders on product decisions, technical strategy, and customer delivery.
Requirements
* Top academic background from leading UK universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial preferred) in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
* 1-4 years' experience, ideally within a startup or early-stage environment with genuine ownership and consistent product shipping.
* Strong experience in AI/LLM systems (e.g. prompt engineering, agents, RAG pipelines, or similar).
* Proven track record of building and shipping real products with clear examples of side projects, GitHub work, or personal builds.
* Actively experimenting with LLMs, agents, or new technologies outside of work.
* Strong engineering fundamentals with the ability to work across Python, TypeScript/React, and PostgreSQL.
* Comfortable working with high autonomy, solving ambiguous problems, and architecting solutions without detailed specifications.
* Exposure to healthcare, biotech, or regulated data environments is a plus.
Compensation and benefits:
* £100–130K base salary with flexibility for exceptional candidates.
* Meaningful equity as a true founding team member.
* Direct collaboration with founders on product and strategy.
* Opportunity to define the technical architecture and engineering culture from the ground up.
* Exposure to enterprise clients, including potential travel to the US.
* Fast-paced, high-impact environment with significant learning and growth.