Founding Engineer, Infrastructure & Platform

C&D Talent Advisory; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

C&D Talent Advisory is helping a seed-stage startup find a Founding Engineer, Infrastructure & Platform in London. You will own backend services and the underlying infrastructure, shaping architecture for multi-year enterprise deployments with founding-team ownership and autonomy.

You’ll build cloud foundations, write Terraform, design secure multi-tenant systems, manage CI/CD pipelines, observability, and production operations while aligning with security and compliance needs (SOC 2, ISO

Qualifications

• 6+ years of backend engineering experience.
• Significant infrastructure ownership in production environments.
• Strong professional experience with a backend programming language.
• Strong TypeScript or Node.js experience preferred.
• Production experience with Terraform.
• Strong CI/CD experience.

Responsibilities

• Build and own backend services across the platform.
• Develop APIs, asynchronous workflows, and core data models.
• Design and maintain cloud infrastructure foundations.
• Own Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• Design secure multi-tenant isolation across compute, data, and network layers.
• Own deployment pipelines and CI/CD infrastructure.
• Build and maintain observability systems.
• Establish and improve production on-call practices.

Skills

Backend engineering

Infrastructure ownership

TypeScript/Node.js

CI/CD

Cloud infrastructure

Security fundamentals

IAM & access-control

Secrets management

Tools

Terraform

Docker

Postgres

GitHub Actions

AKS

Azure

Job description

Founding Engineer, Infrastructure & Platform | London

• Location: King's Cross, London
• Work model: On-site by default, with some flexibility
• Employment: Full-time
• Level: Mid-Senior / Founding Engineer
• Experience: 6+ years
• Estimated compensation: £130,000–£170,000 +Equity
• Industry: Enterprise AI / Risk Infrastructure
• Environment: Seed-stage, high-growth startup

About the opportunity

• Join a seed-stage company building AI-native risk infrastructure for regulated enterprises
• Build systems used by customers across financial services, regulated technology, and healthcare
• Own both core backend services and the infrastructure foundations they run on
• Shape a platform where security, compliance, reliability, and enterprise trust are critical to winning customers
• Work directly on architecture that supports multi-year enterprise deployments
• Operate with founding-team levels of ownership and autonomy
• Partner closely with company leadership on technical direction and platform evolution

What you'll own

• Build and own backend services across the platform
• Develop APIs, asynchronous workflows, and core data models
• Design and maintain cloud infrastructure foundations
• Own Infrastructure as Code using Terraform
• Design secure multi-tenant isolation across compute, data, and network layers
• Own deployment pipelines and CI/CD infrastructure
• Build and maintain observability systems
• Establish and improve production on-call practices
• Develop infrastructure for long-running AI agent workloads
• Build systems for large-scale document processing
• Design secure execution environments for AI tools and agents
• Automate compliance evidence collection
• Build infrastructure supporting SOC 2, ISO 27001, and similar frameworks
• Develop internal tooling that allows engineers to ship quickly without compromising security or reliability

What we're looking for

• 6+ years of backend engineering experience
• Significant infrastructure ownership in production environments
• Strong professional experience with a backend programming language
• Strong TypeScript or Node.js experience preferred
• Production experience with Terraform
• Strong CI/CD experience
• Experience with containerized production workloads
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure
• Experience owning systems through deployment and production operations
• Strong security fundamentals
• Experience with IAM and access-control architecture
• Experience with network segmentation
• Strong understanding of secrets management
• Awareness of software supply-chain security
• Experience designing and implementing compliance controls
• Hands‑on ownership of SOC 2, ISO 27001, or comparable compliance programs
• Operational maturity from supporting production systems that matter
• Ability to balance rapid product delivery with security and reliability requirements
• High level of autonomy and technical ownership

Particularly valuable experience

• Azure
• Azure Container Apps
• Azure Service Bus
• Azure Front Door
• Entra ID
• Multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure
• Compute isolation
• Data isolation
• Network isolation
• Audit-sensitive enterprise products
• GitHub Actions
• Docker
• Postgres
• AKS
• Production-grade AI infrastructure
• LLM platforms
• RAG systems
• Agentic workflows
• Secure AI tool execution
• High-volume document-processing systems

Strong profile signals

• Former founder or technical founder
• Former CTO returning to an individual-contributor role
• Founding or early-stage engineering experience
• Strong product-engineering mindset
• History of owning architecture as well as implementation
• Experience shipping backend systems directly used by customers
• Startup-style production ownership
• Side projects or evidence of independent technical building
• Technical talks, open-source work, or other evidence of deep engineering interest
• Experience working in environments where reliability and compliance directly affect commercial outcomes
• Strong AI-first development mindset
• Comfortable using AI coding tools such as Claude Code or equivalent

This role may not be the right fit if you

• Have primarily front-end engineering experience
• Lack meaningful backend or infrastructure ownership
• Have worked exclusively in cybersecurity without hands‑on product engineering
• Have primarily Developer Relations or Developer Experience experience
• Have spent your career only on internal tooling without customer‑facing product impact
• Have limited experience operating production systems
• Have no practical Infrastructure as Code or CI/CD experience
• Have only participated in compliance processes rather than designing and implementing controls
• Prefer highly specialized infrastructure work without broader product ownership
• Prefer large‑company structures with narrowly defined responsibilities
• Are not comfortable working primarily on-site in London

What you'll get

• Founding-level technical ownership
• Significant influence over platform architecture
• Direct impact on which enterprise customers the company can support
• Opportunity to build secure, production‑grade AI infrastructure from an early stage
• Exposure to complex enterprise security and compliance requirements
• Close collaboration with company leadership
• Top-decile London market compensation
• Meaningful EMI‑eligible equity
• Strong AI tooling and API budgets
• Daily team lunch
• Specialty coffee
• King's Cross office with roof terrace and on‑site facilities
• High‑autonomy engineering environment
• Opportunity to build both product and infrastructure systems end-to-end