Founding AI Engineer | YC Start-Up

Oho Group; Greater London; On-site; GBP 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Oho Group, a London-based YC-backed AI startup, is hiring a Founding AI Engineer to own core AI development, build autonomous systems, and steer the technical roadmap from ground up. You will shape high-impact AI products and scalable infrastructure in a fast-moving environment.

Seeking an exceptional, production-focused engineer with strong LLM expertise and a track record of delivering end-to-end systems. Competitive package and substantial ownership await.

Qualifications

• Exceptional academic background with a First Class degree or equivalent.
• Entrepreneurial and ambitious mindset with willingness to build something large.
• Outstanding software engineering experience with production-grade apps.
• Strong understanding of LLMs, agentic AI systems, and AI applications that can reason and act.
• Comfort with full engineering lifecycle from concept to deployment.
• Ability to move quickly and own outcomes.

Skills

Academic excellence

Ambitious mindset

Production-grade software

LLMs and agentic AI

Full lifecycle ownership

Ownership mindset

Education

First Class degree

Tools

LLM orchestration

Tool calling

RAG

Production AI infra

Job description

Founding AI Engineer | YC Backed Start-Up | £160K–£180K

Founding AI Engineer needed to join an exceptionally ambitious, rapidly scaling London-based YC-backed AI start-up. Backed by Y Combinator and building towards becoming one of the next major players in the AI space, the business is already attracting significant attention, with huge ambitions for global expansion. The team is looking to bring on exceptional engineers who want to be part of something from the ground up. You'll have the opportunity to take ownership of core AI development, build intelligent products and autonomous systems, and help shape the technical direction of a business with the potential to become a category-defining company.

You are:

• From an exceptional academic background (First Class preferred).
• Highly ambitious, entrepreneurial and motivated by the opportunity to build something potentially huge.
• An outstanding software engineer with strong experience building and shipping production-grade applications.
• Strong understanding of LLMs, agentic AI systems and developing intelligent applications that can reason, make decisions and take meaningful actions.
• Comfortable working across the full engineering lifecycle, from initial concept and architecture through to deployment and iteration.
• Someone who takes extreme ownership, moves quickly and thrives in environments where there is no established playbook.

Extra points:

• Previously worked within a YC-backed, early-stage or high-growth venture-backed start-up.
• Experience building and deploying autonomous AI agents or complex multi-agent systems.
• Strong full-stack engineering capabilities, with the ability to build products end-to-end.
• Experience working with LLM orchestration, tool calling, RAG, evaluation frameworks and production AI infrastructure.
• Experience taking an early-stage product from 0–1 and scaling it towards significant adoption.
• Strong entrepreneurial mindset, with an interest in founding or building a business of your own one day.

Why join the team?

Join an ambitious YC-backed business with a nine-figure valuation and aspirations to become one of the next major AI unicorns. Genuine founding-level influence over the technical direction, architecture and product roadmap. Competitive package of £160K–£180K. If you're an exceptional Software Engineer or AI Engineer who wants to be part of building the next big thing in AI, this is an opportunity worth exploring. Particularly interesting for engineers who have already worked in high-calibre engineering environments and are now looking for something with significantly more ownership, autonomy and upside.

Founding AI Engineer | £160K–£180K | London | YC Backed