About Us
With the rise of ever more intelligent AI models, cybersecurity has never been more important. At HelmGuard AI, we're building the infrastructure needed to get AI working effectively to protect and defend our most critical institutions from attack.
We are constructing the world’s first superintelligent cybersecurity operating system utilising new AI-native primitives and our own innovations such as LLM Zero Knowledge Verifiers (ZKVs). We're a seed stage startup backed by leading investors including Entrepreneur First and the Sequoia Scout Fund and strategic angels from leading technology companies, including Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Asana, Samsara, Palantir and Astranis.
We’re based in London, with a presence in San Francisco.
The Role
As a Founding Backend Engineer, you'll be instrumental in shaping our technical infrastructure from the ground up. You'll take ownership of our existing product and design, build, and maintain the systems that power our next phase of growth, ensuring our platform is robust, secure, and scalable. This is a unique opportunity to make a significant impact as we grow.
In your first six months, you'll help us push the platform to deliver on our existing customer pipeline, while putting in place the deployment infrastructure and recruiting strategy necessary to achieve our ambition.
At the moment we are in the middle of a shift from a single tenant architecture to a truly multi-tenant scalable solution. If you join us, you will be instrumental in designing and shipping that solution which will be relied upon by critical institutions for its reliability and security.
What You'll Do
We maintain a lean, fast-paced and high ownership culture that demands and facilitates flexible, high-output performance. No two days are the same, but a typical week might include conducting desk side interviews with users, architecting new services, collaborating with our AI engineers to determine requirements, and making key infrastructure decisions that shape our product roadmap.
More generally, you will:
* Architect and implement reliable, scalable backend systems
* Build and document APIs that power our platform
* Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting systems
* Optimize our infrastructure for performance and cost
* Collaborate with our AI team to integrate research into production systems
* Think deeply about the way AI generated code should be handled in our software development lifecycle, taking seriously the use of technologies like the Claude Code SDK for various activities.
What We're Looking For
Technical Skills
Core Infrastructure
* DevOps Expertise: Some experience with cloud infrastructure (Azure, AWS, GCP) including managing AI-specific considerations like rate limits and message limits. Knowledge of containerization with Docker.
* Backend Development: Ability to build robust, secure web servers capable of handling significant traffic. Experience with our current stack (Node.js, Express and Rust hosted on Azure) is a plus.
* Infrastructure as Code: Some proficiency with tools like Terraform to programmatically manage cloud resources.
* CI/CD Pipeline Management: Some experience setting up and maintaining automated testing and deployment workflows using GitHub Actions.
Development and API Design
* Scaling Applications: Previous success scaling applications to handle growing user bases and increasing traffic loads.
* API Design: Strong knowledge of RESTful API design principles and experience building developer-friendly APIs.
Operational Excellence
* Monitoring and Observability for AI Models: Some experience of implementing logging, metrics, and alerting systems to maintain visibility into application performance and health specifically where those services rely upon third party model providers like Anthropic.
* Cost Optimization/FinOps: Experience managing cloud resources efficiently and optimizing infrastructure costs without sacrificing performance.
Security and Compliance
* Security Implementation: Understanding of web security principles, authentication and authorization systems, and protection against common vulnerabilities. You'll work with our in-house security expert on implementing best practices.
Required Qualifications
* Track record of technical leadership in fast-paced environments
* Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail
Preferred Experience
* Degree in Computer Science or related field from a leading institution
* To have worked at a technology scale-up.
Mindset & Approach
* Detail-Oriented: Exceptional attention to detail when designing, implementing, and monitoring systems.
* Production Experience: Previous experience taking systems from concept to production deployment.
* AI-Enabled Workflow: Excitement about using AI tools like Claude Code and internal AI agents to optimize development workflows.
* Startup Mentality: Comfort with ambiguity and eagerness to take ownership of critical infrastructure.
* Collaborative Spirit: Ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical team members.
* An Ownership Mindset: A strong desire to take ownership of decisions and projects. At HelmGuard we are forgiving of mistakes and give credit for wins, provided individuals take ownership of the process which lead to those wins.
Why Join Us
As one of our first engineering hires, you'll report directly to the CEO and have unparalleled opportunity to shape our technical direction and build systems from the ground up. You'll work alongside talented AI researchers while having autonomy to make key infrastructure decisions.
This role offers the rare combination of cutting-edge AI work with the chance to build robust, scalable systems that bring that research to life.
What We Offer
* Opportunity to shape the future of AI-driven enterprise security applications
* Competitive salary and significant equity package (EMI-eligible for UK residents)
* Direct collaboration with co-founders on technical strategy
* Rapid career growth potential as we scale
* Innovative, fast-paced startup environment
How to Apply
If you're excited about building the infrastructure to put AI into production defending our organizations and institutions, please get in touch through our Careers page: https://helmguard.ai/about.