Founding Engineer

We’re partnering with an early-stage AI-driven startup building a next-generation personal project manager — an intelligent assistant on a smartphone that helps turn intent into action. Through simple micro-interactions, the system routes tasks to the right person or AI agent, and presents everything requiring the user's attention in one unified feed.

The company is a small, highly experienced team led by a deeply technical founder with a strong track record (three B2C products, $200M+ combined valuation, one successful exit). Backed by $3M in pre-seed funding, the team is moving fast toward an MVP and preparing for public launch.

They’re now looking for a Founding Engineer — the main technical member of the team who will take full ownership of the backend and architecture. This is not a managerial role. The team is intentionally engineering-driven: they want someone who loves coding, thrives in hands-on work, and can design robust systems from scratch. Over time, the role will naturally expand into helping hire and shape the future technical team.

What you’ll do

• Own the backend: design domain models, service boundaries, and clean REST APIs for the iOS app.
• Build event-driven systems: queues/workers, retries, backoff, DLQs, idempotency, outbox/saga patterns.
• Design and build agentic systems: planners, tool‑using executors, reflection/critique loops, and multi‑agent workflows.
• Make data fly: PostgreSQL schemas, migrations, indexes; Redis for caching, locks.
• Ship production-grade reliability: observability (metrics/traces/logs), SLOs, on-call readiness, perf profiling.
• Harden security: secrets management, least-privilege, input/tenant isolation, safe PII handling.
• Level up DX: CI/CD, testing strategy, code reviews, docs, and ruthless simplicity in implementation.

Tech stack

Node.js 24+; TypeScript 5.9; NestJS, Clean Architecture & DDD; PostgreSQL 17+, Redis 8+, BullMQ Pro; AI SDK, LLMs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini; client: iOS 26, SwiftUI + SwiftData.

You’re a great fit if you

• Have strong experience with Node.js + TypeScript, and can write clean, maintainable NestJS code.
• Can design asynchronous, fault-tolerant workflows with queues, workers, and idempotency.
• Speak SQL fluently: indexing, locking, transactions, and performance.
• Care about API ergonomics and compatibility over time.
• Treat reliability, security, and observability as first-class features.
• Move fast with judgment and communicate crisply.
• Have high energy, an ownership mindset, and genuine enthusiasm for building.
• Actively use AI tools in your engineering workflow and embrace an AI-accelerated development style.

Nice to have

• AI experience (LLMs, agents, RAG/vectors).
• Product instincts and taste for simple, focused UX.
• Security/privacy by design; secrets, PII handling, and pragmatic compliance.
• Experience collaborating with iOS/SwiftUI teams.

Location

The role is ideally suited for someone based in London or willing to relocate there. Exceptional candidates could be considered for remote work.

Why join this company?

• Build a category-defining product from the ground up.
• Work alongside a strong, hands-on technical founder and a team of senior engineers.
• High ownership, zero bureaucracy, real influence on product and architecture.
• Competitive salary + meaningful equity.
• Relocation and visa support.