Lead AI Software Engineer

About Us

Tracer is an early‑stage, venture‑backed startup building the open‑source AI SRE agent for production engineering. We are backed by experienced operators and investors who believe AI for production systems will be one of the defining enterprise software categories of the next decade. Our team is small, senior, and highly execution‑focused.

Tracer is building an open‑source AI SRE agent () that automatically investigates production incidents across the entire production stack. We’re hiring a Lead AI Software Engineer in London to own the core architecture and ship an agent that produces grounded RCAs and fix suggestions across production infrastructure. Humans stay in control of production decisions; the agent does the heavy lifting. This is a hands‑on, high‑ownership role at the center of the product.

• Python + Lang Graph (for multi‑agentic alert investigation)
• Rust
• Click House (high‑volume event + investigation history at scale)
• AWS + Terraform (infrastructure that builds itself)
• Next.js + Type Script

You’ll own the core systems that turn an alert into a defensible investigation and RCA. In practice, you will:

• Architect and build the core alert, investigation, root cause analysis (RCA) pipeline in Python.
• Design and implement key systems including:
  • Alert ingestion + normalization
  • Context enrichment + correlation
  • Problem framing outputs
  • Hypothesis orchestration engine
  • Investigation execution runtime
  • Investigation artifacts + reporting
• Drive core architecture decisions and ensure the system is observable, auditable, and reliable from day one.
• Partner with founders to ship a small set of high‑value alert types that work extremely well, then expand coverage deliberately.
• Build customer‑ready integrations across the pipeline stack.
• Educate and guide future engineers, setting a high bar for technical quality, speed, and pragmatism.

• 5+ years (ideally 10+) professional software engineering experience.
• Proven track record of shipping real products at high velocity.
• Strong backend and distributed‑systems foundations, ideally with experience in data platforms and production pipeline stacks and incident/observability tooling.
• Experience working at an early‑stage startup (bonus for having joined earlier).
• High ownership and sharp product instincts: you build what matters and cut what doesn’t.

Total Compensation Range: £70,000 – £130,000+ (salary and equity value).

We structure compensation as follows:

• Competitive base salary
• Meaningful equity ownership with real upside
• Final package depends on experience, impact, and seniority

What’s included:

• Salary + equity (equity typically ~0.3% – 2%+)
• 30 days annual leave
• Employee health insurance
• Visa sponsorship
  
  Weekly team dinners and socials
• Regular team offsites and trips