Founding AI Developer

Perm | Hybrid (2-3 days on site a week) | Up to £48,000 | Stock Options

We have partnered with an early-stage AI startup building intelligent software for the maintenance, engineering, and industrial operations space.

They’re looking for a Founding Software Engineer to join at a genuinely early stage and help shape both the product and wider technical direction of the business as they scale, with growth to CTO level on offer.

This is not a “ticket taking” environment. The role is ideal for someone who enjoys ownership, ambiguity, building from scratch, and solving real-world operational problems with AI.

• Building AI-powered platforms and workflow tooling for industrial and engineering environments
• Developing APIs, integrations, and backend systems connecting operational data into AI-driven products
• Working across AI agents, RAG pipelines, embeddings, vector databases, and LLM orchestration
• Designing scalable cloud-native infrastructure within AWS
• Building customer-facing product functionality across frontend and backend systems
• Helping shape architecture, engineering standards, deployment processes, and long-term technical direction
• Working directly with founders and customers to turn operational problems into product solutions

• Python (~60% of codebase)
• Node.js / FastAPI
• AWS (Potential for GCP transformation)
• REST APIs
• AI agents / LLM integrations / RAG
• CI/CD & cloud infrastructure

• Enjoys startup environments and ownership-heavy roles
• Can operate across frontend + backend engineering
• Has experience building production software and APIs
• Is excited by AI products and modern LLM tooling
• Communicates well with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Wants to help build a company, not just contribute code

Experience scaling AI-powered products into production environments? Amazing! Not required but very beneficial.

Share options available

Direct product and architectural influence

Exposure to enterprise-scale industrial customers

Clear progression into future technical leadership as the business grows

This would suit someone who wants to get in early, build something meaningful, and grow alongside an ambitious AI-first business.