The Opportunity
We’re a well-funded pre-seed startup on a mission to improve the happiness and wellbeing of people across the globe.
Ember is a relationship wellness app that enables couples to strengthen and enhance their connection, communicate more effectively, and cultivate healthier partnerships. The app helps couples develop a deeper understanding of one another, while facilitating better communication, resolving conflicts constructively, and strengthening emotional intimacy.
Built on years of relationship coaching experience from co-founder and relationship coach Ellie Baker, and grounded in relationship science, Ember is intentionally designed to meet couples at any stage of their journey– supporting them through the good times, the bad times and the 'just okay, but it could be better' times.
Powered by AI, Ember's platform analyzes a couple's existing communication patterns to deliver personalized guidance and support, functioning as a tool that gets couples talking in real life, not just through their devices. The app helps couples create space each day to connect and grow together through structured conversations, daily rituals, and insights that help create meaningful moments.
In a world where people track and optimize every aspect of life as individuals: sleep, fitness, nutrition, productivity — Ember focuses on strengthening the thing that can have the biggest impact on happiness and personal growth: your relationship with your partner.
We’re in stealth(ish) mode, this is the chance to be one of the founding employees, working alongside an experienced founding team to significantly help shape the product and business we’re building.
We have been running in beta for 6 months now and are getting amazing consumer feedback, plus extremely encouraging CACs and retention.
Who you’ll be working with
James Hind previously the founder of carwow, and ran it for 14 years. It has now had 2m+ consumers buy and sell cars through it, $100m+ annual revenues, employs 600 people and gets 1bn annual YouTube views. Backed by Accel, Balderton, Bessemer and many more. Now on the board at carwow, and Bumper (Series-B fintech).
Ellie Baker is an experienced couples coach and relationship expert. MA in Psychology from the University of Oxford.
Jack Haslehurst, who led all design and user research at Kraken, 70+ team. Ex Zoe, The Collective and Ideo
Nick Kuh, who was Director of Engineering at ASquared and founder of multiple app startups
Rafał Radziszewski, experienced Ruby and Elixir developer, ex Team Lead at v7. Co-founded startup before
Josie Nelder, experienced Full Stack Developer at Habitual, ASquared and Matchbox Mobile
Adnan Ebrahim, founder of MindLabs (£6m+ raised) and of CarThrottle, acquired by Dennis Publishing
We’re well funded
We’re backed by a well-known VC, and multiple useful tech angels. The vast majority of Ember’s funding came from carwow’s early investors. We closed out pre-seed round mid-2025.
We have a big vision and mission
We’re building a product that will improve the happiness and wellbeing of people around the world.
We love the fact that the bigger we get, the more people we’ll be directly helping. Our growth will directly translate to making couples happier.
The Role
We’ve been building fast since we got funded and now have a small but high-performing team
This is initially an extremely hands-on role, and the right person will grow with us, with many opportunities for career development available (IC or Management).
Areas of work:
Backend Development:
* Building our backend services: Developing robust, fault-tolerant Elixir applications using Phoenix and OTP
* AI engineering: Designing and implementing sophisticated AI pipelines, managing model interactions, and optimizing AI response handling
* AI system integration: Architecting systems that interface with multiple AI services and models efficiently, including prompt engineering and context management
* Data management: Implementing advanced data storage, retrieval, and processing systems to handle large volumes of user data and AI interactions
* Database design: Creating efficient database schemas and query patterns using PostgreSQL with a focus on AI-related data structures
* Real-time features: Implementing Phoenix Channels, WebSockets and real-time communication
* API development: Building performant, well-documented APIs
1.
Frontend/CMS Development:
* Building our CMS: Developing and maintaining our React-based content management system
* Internal tooling: Creating intuitive interfaces for content creation, user management, and system administration
* Data visualization: Building dashboards and analytics interfaces
* UI implementation: Translating requirements into clean, functional user interfaces with TypeScript
* Integration work: Connecting frontend tools seamlessly with backend services
What we’re looking for:
* Proven expertise: 5+ years, with 2+ years experience building production Elixir/Phoenix applications
* Phoenix Framework mastery: Deep understanding of Phoenix and the broader Elixir ecosystem
* Functional programming proficiency: Strong grasp of functional programming principles and patterns
* OTP knowledge: Experience with OTP supervision trees, GenServers, and distributed Erlang applications
* Database expertise: Strong PostgreSQL skills with experience optimizing complex queries
* AI-assisted development: Experience using modern AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to accelerate development
* Fullstack mindset: Comfortable working across the entire stack and excited to own features end-to-end
* Distributed systems understanding: Knowledge of building reliable distributed systems
* Mindset Over Tenure: We're more interested in your technical abilities, adaptability, ambition, and hunger to learn than a specific number of years of experience
* Hustle & Autonomy: You thrive in a fast-paced environment with minimal hand-holding. You're excited about wearing many hats
* Communication skills: Ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical team members
What would be super impressive?
* Kubernetes and IaC experience: Our system runs on GCP GKE, all configured with Terraform. If you wanted to dive into this, we’d love it.
Interview process
* Initial Screen with James Hind, Founder
* Technical Interview with Nick and Rafal
* Cultural Interview
Why join us?
* Shape the Future: Be one of our founding employees, with a real say in product and strategy
* High-Impact Mission: Every user we gain is someone whose day-to-day life can be made happier
* Experienced Founder and team: Learn from and grow alongside seasoned founders and team who’ve built large-scale companies
* Remuneration: We can afford to pay a competitive market salary and give generous founding employee equity
Remuneration
* £80-100k plus generous founding employee equity
Location
* Ideally, you’d be in the UK and able to meet with us in London one day a week. We are however open to EU based remote too
Apply
* james@embercouples.com