Founding AI Engineer – Real-Time Translation Leader

Hike; Greater London; On-site; GBP 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity for early employee

Workplace pension contributions

London office access

Job summary

Hike, a London-based AI translation startup, is seeking a founding-level senior engineer to steer the AI direction and model architecture. You’ll own long-term technical bets that determine how the product thinks, learns, and scales.

You’ll sit on the senior leadership committee alongside the CEO and Heads of Engineering and Product, shaping real-time translation capabilities and high-impact decisions in a fast-moving, ambitious team.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience building and shipping AI models, not just fine-tuning.
• Experience solving hard problems: real-time processing, speech, translation, or low-latency inference.
• Background from DeepMind, top research labs, or early-stage AI teams with high standards.
• Curious, sharp, and energized by unsolved problems; trusted with decisions that are hard to reverse.
• Capable of independent senior work while staying aligned with a small, fast-moving team.

Responsibilities

• Own the AI direction, model architecture, and long-term technical bets for the product.
• Collaborate with CEO, Head of Engineering, Head of Product, GTM and Chief of Staff.
• Lead development as a founding-level role, shaping how the product thinks, learns and scales.
• Build and scale real-time translation capabilities across languages.

Skills

Hands-on AI development

Real-time / low-latency inference

High-caliber research background

Independent senior contributor

Clear communicator & trusted decision‑

Job description

Hike, a London-based AI translation startup, is seeking a founding-level senior engineer to steer the AI direction and model architecture. You’ll own long-term technical bets that determine how the product thinks, learns, and scales.

You’ll sit on the senior leadership committee alongside the CEO and Heads of Engineering and Product, shaping real-time translation capabilities and high-impact decisions in a fast-moving, ambitious team.