Lead AI Engineer

Surgical Recovery; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Path to CTO

Hybrid work in London

Job summary

Surgical Recovery is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to own and scale Seento, the AI patient care platform used across surgeries. You will lead AI initiatives, integrate with our existing stack, and work closely with clinicians and executives to ensure safety and impact.

This role offers equity and a clear path toward CTO as the platform matures. The ideal candidate has 8+ years in software, hands-on AI with LLMs, and experience in health-tech or regulated settings.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building software for real customers, leadership role in product tech.
• Hands-on production experience with LLMs, AI agents, tooling, retrieval, guardrails and monitoring.
• Experience with messaging platforms (WhatsApp Business API, Twilio) and mobile-first design.
• Experience in regulated or high-trust environments (health/finance/insurance) including security and data protection.
• Strong full-stack skills with API integration, webhooks and calendars; able to work on existing codebases.
• Ability to communicate technical risk clearly to clinicians, investors and partners.
• Familiarity with health software standards (DCB0129, DTAC, DSPT, FHIR/HL7) and medical device software (MHRA/FDA, IEC 62304, ISO 13485).
• Experience hiring and leading small teams, including contractors.

Responsibilities

• Own Seento platform; ensure security, reliability and scalability.
• Lead AI initiatives and programs; drive development of proprietary AI.
• Ensure clinical safety and compatibility with hospitals and insurers.
• Build and mentor the engineering team; collaborate with data scientists.

Skills

LLMs & AI agents

Messaging-first products

Full-stack development

Security & data protection

System architecture & scale

Mentoring & leading teams

Distributed teams collaboration

Documentation & risk communication

Regulated health tech familiarity

Tools

GitHub

Vercel

Supabase

Claude (core AI model)

Job description

Lead AI Engineer | Surgical Recovery | London (hybrid), UK

Founding engineer and AI lead for Seento, our AI patient care platform, with a path to CTO. You'll be our first senior technical hire, building Seento into the AI platform that runs patient care around surgery, at scale.

Seento is a mobile-first, AI-powered patient care platform. It fits into the surgeon's own workflow on WhatsApp and email, and it's free for surgeons. Seento's AI runs the patient comms; our CQC-registered doctors run the care; surgeons get back to surgery.

The AI books and reminds, chases forms and results, runs check-ins and flags anything clinical to a doctor. When a surgeon hands a patient to us, our doctor-led team looks after them before and after the operation, or at home with no operation at all.

Seento launched on 1 October 2026. In its first month it took on 100+ patients and 10 consultants, and two clinics are beta testing it. Behind it is Surgical Recovery, a CQC-registered, doctor-led service that has cared for 500+ patients since 2022. We're in live conversations with hospitals, clinics and insurers in the UK, the Middle East, Asia and North America, and our startup partners include Google for Startups, Microsoft for Startups and Barclays Eagle Labs.

Seento was built in-house by our CEO. Seento runs on Claude today, and we're developing our own proprietary AI. Your job is to own the platform, make it production-grade, lead our AI programmes and build the engineering team around them, alongside our new data scientist.

What you'll do:

• Own Seento. Take over the platform, and make it secure, reliable and ready to scale.
• Lead our AI. The AI that runs patient comms today, and the programmes building our own proprietary AI.
• Keep it safe. Make Seento fit for clinical use and for hospitals, insurers and health systems.
• Build the team. Hire and lead our engineers, working alongside our data scientist.

You’ll work closely with the CEO, who sets product direction, and the CMO, who owns clinical safety.

What's you'll bring:

Must have

• 8+ years building software, including leading the technical side of a product used by real customers, ideally as an early engineer, tech lead or founder.
• Hands-on production experience with LLMs and AI agents: tool use, workflow orchestration, retrieval, evaluation, guardrails and monitoring. You know how agents fail and how to catch it before a patient notices.
• Messaging-first products: WhatsApp Business API, Twilio or similar, and mobile-first design for busy users.
• Experience shipping in a regulated or high-trust setting (health, finance, insurance, government), including security, audit and data protection.
• Strong full-stack skills and integration experience (APIs, webhooks, calendars). You'll be writing code from week one. Our stack today is GitHub, Vercel and Supabase, with Claude as our core AI model. It will evolve as the platform grows, and you'll lead those choices.
• Comfortable taking over a live codebase you didn't write, improving it without stopping the service, and documenting as you go.
• You can explain technical risk clearly to clinicians, investors and partners.
• Health software standards: DCB0129, DTAC, DSPT, FHIR or HL7.
• Medical device software: MHRA or FDA, IEC 62304, ISO 13485.
• Data engineering for machine learning, and putting models into production.
• Voice and speech AI.
• You've hired and led a small team, and worked with contractors.

You might be a CTO or tech lead at a health-tech or AI start-up, a founding engineer, or a Staff or Principal Engineer ready to lead. What you've built and shipped matters more than your title.

How we work:

We're a small, doctor-led team. These are the things we hold to, and we'd expect you to hold us to them too.

• Patients first, safety always. AI does the admin; a doctor makes every clinical decision. If something isn't safe, it doesn't ship, however good the demo looks.
• Evidence over claims. We say what we can prove, and we correct our own numbers when they're wrong. We want an engineer who measures, tests and writes things down.
• Build what's needed now. We hire and spend against real patient numbers. Simple, reliable and finished beats clever and half-built.
• One team with clinicians. You'll sit alongside our doctors, physiotherapists and the surgeons who use Seento, and you'll see how the work is really done before you automate it.
• Ownership without ego. Everyone does what the patient needs, from fixing a bug at 8pm to walking a consultant through a referral.

What we offer:

• Lead the platform. You're the senior technical person in the company and Seento's named technical owner, working directly with the CEO and CMO.
• Equity. Equity is available as part of the package, agreed with the right candidate.
• Pay. The salary starts modest, alongside equity, and increases once our seed round closes.
• A path to CTO. As the team and the platform grow, this role is designed to grow into CTO.
• Work that matters. One in six people having planned surgery suffers a complication, and too many operations are cancelled on the day. Your work helps fix that.

Loction:

Full-time. You must live in the UK and have the right to work here; we can't sponsor visas. Ideally you're in or near London. We work hybrid, with regular in-person days in London with the team, clinicians and partners. Our team, data and hosting stay in the UK.