Founding Software Engineer – Backend, DevOps & Applied AI

🚨 Software Engineer – Backend, DevOps & Applied AI 📍 London – Onsite I’m working with an early-stage AI company building the workforce coordination platform for critical infrastructure. Their technology brings fragmented operational data into one real-time system, helping teams predict disruption, coordinate people and keep complex operations running on time. This is a high-ownership Software Engineer opportunity for someone with roughly 2–3 years of experience who has already shipped real software to production and wants significantly more responsibility than they would receive inside a large organisation. You’ll work across: 💻 Building production-grade backend systems using Python and TypeScript ⚙️ Developing reliable, event-driven infrastructure for real-time operational workflows ☁️ Owning cloud infrastructure, deployments, observability and production reliability 🤖 Applying ML and AI to complex coordination and decision-making problems 📊 Turning fragmented customer data into reliable, actionable operational intelligence 🚀 Taking projects from an ambiguous problem through architecture, implementation, testing and production deployment 🤝 Working directly with founders and customers to understand operational challenges and ship practical solutions quickly ✈️ Travelling approximately one week per month as engineers gradually take ownership of customer deployments from the founders Requirements: ✅ Approximately 2–3 years of professional software engineering experience ✅ Strong hands-on ability with Python and/or TypeScript ✅ Experience building backend services, infrastructure, deployment systems or applied ML products ✅ Evidence of personally shipping software into production and operating it safely ✅ Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to reason critically about unfamiliar problems ✅ Comfort balancing backend development, deployments and live customer feedback simultaneously ✅ High emotional intelligence and the ability to communicate effectively with both technical and operational stakeholders ✅ Genuine enthusiasm for an intense, fast-moving startup where responsibility extends beyond a narrow job description ⭐ Applied AI, customer-facing infrastructure or forward-deployed engineering experience is highly valuable ⭐ A strong academic background or experience within a high-calibre engineering organisation is advantageous They are looking for a curious, competitive and emotionally intelligent engineer who can move between code, infrastructure and customer problems without waiting for someone else to define every step. You’ll join a small, ambitious team building AI systems for operational environments where reliability and real-world outcomes matter. It is an opportunity to take meaningful ownership early, work closely with the founders and help shape both the product and the engineering culture. 💰 £120k-£150k base salary + founding equity