Lead Engineer

Explore Group; England; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A cutting-edge legal technology startup in London is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to develop innovative AI-driven solutions for property transactions. This role offers the chance to build and ship features from day one while working closely with users. The ideal candidate has experience with TypeScript and understands user-centric problem-solving. The company provides substantial equity, private medical cover, and ample holidays, ensuring a collaborative and dynamic environment with the founding team.

Benefits

Base salary between £100,000 and £150,000

Meaningful equity

5% employer pension contribution

Private medical cover

25 days holiday plus bank holidays

Qualifications

• Experience at early-stage startups.
• Strong knowledge of TypeScript codebases.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship production features from your first week.
• Work closely with users to understand pain points.
• Help define product strategy in a fast-moving environment.

Skills

TypeScript experience

User problem-solving

Experiences with AI systems

Startups experience

Tools

React

Google Cloud Platform

Postgres

Job description

Senior Software Engineer

Location : London (Hybrid / On-site)

Salary : £100,000 – £150,000 + equity

About the Company

We’re working with an early‑stage, venture‑backed legal technology startup on a mission to transform one of the UK’s most broken consumer experiences: the legal process behind property transactions.

This market is large, fragmented, and outdated, with high failure rates, poor transparency, and processes still reliant on manual workflows. The company is building the UK’s first AI‑native law firm, starting with property transactions and scaling towards a full‑service, AI‑first legal platform with global ambitions.

The business is backed by a leading early‑stage VC fund and experienced angel investors, and led by a founder who has previously built and scaled a regulated fintech business to multi‑billion‑pound lending volumes. That experience provides a strong foundation for navigating regulation while moving quickly in a traditionally slow industry.

The Role

This is an opportunity for a Staff or Senior Product Engineer to join as one of the earliest engineers in the business. You’ll be part of a small, high‑calibre team of generalists who value product thinking, speed, and engineering craft.

From day one, you’ll have significant ownership, shaping product direction, shipping to production quickly, and working directly with users to define what should be built. Requirements won’t always be fully formed; you’ll be expected to explore problems, test ideas, and iterate fast.

This role reports directly to the founder and offers genuine influence over both product and technical direction.

What You’ll Do

• Build and ship production features from your first week
• Work closely with users to understand pain points and validate solutions
• Help define product strategy in an ambiguous, fast‑moving environment
• Design and scale TypeScript‑based systems across the stack
• Build AI‑powered workflows and agent‑based systems that go beyond basic prompting
• Set engineering standards and raise the bar as the team grows

You May Be a Good Fit If You

• Have experience at early‑stage startups and enjoy high ownership
• Think in terms of user problems, not just technical implementations
• Have scaled and maintained complex TypeScript codebases
• Are comfortable working end‑to‑end across product and engineering
• Actively experiment with and refine AI‑assisted development workflows
• Have built LLM‑powered systems or AI agents in production environments

Tech Stack

• TypeScript monorepo
• React, tRPC, Tailwind
• Event‑driven workflows and background jobs
• Deployed on Google Cloud Platform
• Postgres

What’s On Offer

• £100,000 – £150,000 base salary (depending on experience)
• Meaningful early‑stage equity
• 5% employer pension contribution
• Private medical cover (including dental and optical)
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays
• Choice of AI tooling
• London‑based role (Shoreditch), working closely with the founding team