Founding Engineer
Location: London King's Cross (Relocation Supported) - onsite
Salary: Up to £200k base + meaningful equity
We are partnered up with an early-stage, well-funded AI platform company solving complex problems for large, highly regulated enterprises. The product is already live, customers are active, and the company is scaling fast but the engineering team is still growing.
This is a true founding engineering position with real ownership, influence, and long-term upside.
The Role
As a Founding Backend Engineer, you’ll help architect and build the core backend systems from the ground up. You’ll work across system design, data infrastructure, and production reliability, partnering closely with ML, product, and infrastructure teams.
You won’t be maintaining legacy systems - you’ll be shaping the foundations that everything else is built on.
What You’ll Be Doing
* Designing and building core backend services and APIs in Python
* Architecting scalable data pipelines and distributed systems
* Productionising ML models in close collaboration with ML engineers
* Making early architectural decisions that will scale with the company
* Implementing async processing, caching, and event-driven workflows
* Setting engineering standards and best practices from day one
What We’re Looking For
* 4+ years backend engineering experience
* Strong Python experience (FastAPI, Flask, or Django)
* Previous experience in startups or high-growth environments
* Comfort working with ambiguity, speed, and limited structure
* Strong database knowledge (PostgreSQL, Redis)
* Experience with async task queues and message brokers
* Cloud experience (Azure, AWS, or GCP)
* Builder mindset: ownership, pragmatism, and bias toward action
Why Join
* Competitive salary + meaningful equity
* Relocation support in London
* Direct access to founders and real technical influence
* Opportunity to help build a company from early scale to category leader
This role is not about perfect roadmaps or fixed requirements.
It’s about building fast, thinking deeply, and owning what you ship.