Founding Engineer, Infrastructure & Platform

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

C&D Talent Advisory is seeking a Founding Engineer to own and build the infrastructure and platform for an AI-native risk infrastructure startup in London. You’ll shape cloud foundations, deploy secure multi-tenant systems, and collaborate with leadership on technical direction.

You will own backend services, API design, CI/CD pipelines, and observability while balancing rapid delivery with stringent security and reliability. Equity awaits in a high-growth environment at King's Cross.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of backend engineering experience.
• Significant infrastructure ownership in production environments.
• 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.

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.
• 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.

Skills

Backend engineering

TypeScript/Node.js

CI/CD

Security fundamentals

IAM

Secrets management

Compliance controls

Tools

Terraform

Docker

GitHub Actions

Postgres

AKS

Azure

Azure Container Apps

Azure Service Bus

Azure Front Door

Entra ID

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