Founding Optimisation Engineer

Visa Hunt; Greater London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Significant equity

25 days holiday + birthday off

Moorgate office

Learning & development budget

Foundational role defining the engine

Job summary

DayJob seeks a Founding Optimisation Engineer in London to design and scale our optimisation engine for short-haul trucking. You will own end-to-end model development, from conception to deployment, leveraging state-of-the-art algorithms and pragmatic constraints to improve customer economics.

We value a track record in real-world optimisation or ML for logistics, strong Python/SQL skills, and willingness to lead as we scale from a founding team in a fast-growing startup.

Qualifications

• Degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering or a similar quantitative field.
• 4+ years working on optimisation, routing, scheduling, or applied OR problems with deployed systems.
• Track record of building and shipping optimisation or ML solutions in transport/logistics.
• Experience with geospatial data and related algorithms.
• Strong Python and SQL, with hands-on use of solvers (OR-Tools, Gurobi, CPLEX).
• Ability to design, build, deploy and tune models end-to-end.
• Comfort with messy operational data and edge-case workflows.
• Experience mentoring or leading engineers or a clear aspiration to start.

Skills

Python

SQL

Geospatial data

Solvers (OR-Tools,Gurobi,CPLEX)

Graph theory / computational geometry

Deployed systems experience

Education

Mathematics/Physics/CS/Engineering degree

Tools

OR-Tools

Gurobi

CPLEX

Job description

Founding Optimisation Engineer

London, Moorgate · Full-time · On-site or in Office (4 days/week) · Data Science & Operations Research · Dayjob.AI · YC P26

About DayJob

DayJob builds AI agents for short-haul trucking - a $45bn market still run on spreadsheets, phone calls and software from the 1990s.

We've just completed Y Combinator, are scaling towards $1M ARR, growing ~20% month-on-month, and launching in the US. Our customers include some of the largest waste and recycling operators in the UK and US, and we're backed by leading investors including Paul Graham (Founder of Y Combinator) and Harry Stebbings (Founder of 20VC).

Dayjob has developed its own proprietary models, which wouldn't have been possible until now, delivering hundreds of thousands of pounds in additional revenue to its customers. This is a once in a generation opportunity to change how these businesses operate, industries where software adoption has been slow but where AI adoption can completely change their economics.

About the Optimisation Team

Deploying state-of-the-art algorithms into legacy businesses is one way to think about what we do at Dayjob. Hence, optimisation is the cornerstone of what we do; saving 1% time on the road gives our customers hundreds of thousands more revenue and saves gallons of diesel on wasted mileage.

We've launched models to optimise roll-off vehicles in the waste sector; this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Founding Team

Fred & George met at the University of Oxford.

• George (CEO) was Head of Sales at Otta and launched Deliveroo's Grocery division, scaling it to £100M GMV.

• Fred (CTO) builds products that optimise complex supply chains using AI and advanced analytics.

You may be a good fit if you have

• A degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, or a similar quantitative field

• 4+ years working on optimisation, routing, scheduling, or applied OR problems - ideally with meaningful time on real, deployed systems

• A track record of building and shipping optimisation or ML solutions, ideally in a fast-paced transport or logistics setting

• Experience in working with geospatial data like spectral analysis, applied graph theory and computational geometry.

• Strong Python and SQL, with hands-on experience using solvers (e.g. OR-Tools, Gurobi, CPLEX)

• The ability to balance theoretical rigour with pragmatic constraints, and to own a model end-to-end: design -> build -> deploy -> tune

• Comfort working with messy operational data and edge-case-heavy workflows

• Experience mentoring or leading other engineers, or a clear and genuine ambition to start

Bonus if you've worked on

• Vehicle routing problems (VRP), especially with uncertainty and problem sizes requiring decomposition

• Constraint programming or metaheuristics

• Real-time decision systems

• Logistics, fleet, or field-service products

• Early-stage startups

What we offer

• Competitive salary

• Significant equity

• 25 days holiday + your birthday off

• Moorgate office

• Learning & development budget

• A foundational role defining our optimisation engine and technical roadmap from the ground up

To close

Short-haul trucking is a decade behind companies like Amazon - yet it's the lifeblood of the economy. Our customers deserve better tools, and only now, with AI, are they possible to build. If you want to build the brains of the next-generation dispatch engine, we'd love to meet you.

Compensation: £80K-£120K Offers Equity

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