Founding Software Engineer – Factory & Manufacturing Systems
Location: On-site, London (factory-based)
Salary: Up to £170,000 base + meaningful equity
Industry: Advanced Manufacturing / Defence / Aerospace / Industrial AI
The Company:
They are a very early-stage, software-first manufacturing company building a new industrial backbone for the West.
They are creating a network of small-to-medium, highly specialised factories (starting with CNC machining) and writing the software that runs each factory and orchestrates the entire network end-to-end.
The ambition is to scale from a handful of sites today to dozens (and eventually hundreds) across the UK/Europe and the US, powered by an in-house manufacturing operating system.
The team is sub-20 people.
There are no layers. Every engineer is building the core.
What You’ll Do:
* Build core full-stack systems that run live factories (MES, operator tools, data platforms).
* Architect and ship software for quoting, scheduling, routing, and production orchestration.
* Work on-site with operators and leadership to identify bottlenecks and turn them into product.
* Own problems end-to-end: ambiguous need → design → build → deploy → operate → iterate.
* Help design the software foundations for a distributed factory network.
What We’re Looking For:
* High-agency, independent builders who have worked in very early, fast-moving environments.
* Engineers comfortable without product managers, management layers, or predefined roadmaps.
* People motivated by real-world systems and visible impact, not purely digital products.
* Low-ego, pragmatic, strong engineering fundamentals, biased toward ownership and shipping.
Strong signals include: founding engineer / ex-founder experience, early engineer at tier-1 startups, or exposure to manufacturing, robotics, aerospace or defence.
A slight frontend / UX leaning (React/TypeScript) is a plus and a current team gap.
Years of experience matter less than the environments you’ve chosen and how you operate.
Tech:
TypeScript, React, Postgres, AWS (stack flexibility is fine for strong generalists)
Why You’ll Thrive
* Your software runs real machines producing real components.
* You work inside the factory, not next to it.
* You help build a manufacturing OS from first principles.
* You get genuine founding-stage ownership and meaningful equity.
* You work on industrial problems with national-scale relevance.
This role is open to UK citizens only.