Product Engineer

Ovation Rights; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Ovation Rights seeks a second product engineer to turn problems into usable software, with full-stack responsibilities and interface decisions in a small, autonomous team in London. You will work alongside the Head of Product & Technology, building multiple products with an emphasis on AI tooling to accelerate development.

We build our own products rather than buying them, turning audience-facing rights and royalties data into practical interfaces.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years as a full-stack or product-focused engineer in a startup or small team.
• Highly self-sufficient with ability to define and build from rough problems.
• Experience shipping polished, user-facing features end to end, including the interface.
• Obsessive about AI tooling with practical use of agents, loops or evals.

Responsibilities

• Leading development of new features from problem statement to production, across several products.
• Making the interface decisions in the absence of a design team.
• Using AI and LLMs pragmatically to accelerate development and power product features.
• Working directly with users to gather feedback and validate decisions.
• Owning the quality bar on shipped work, with maintainable code and sensible tradeoffs.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

AI tooling

SQL

Data modelling

Python

FastAPI

Postgres

Next.js

TypeScript

Job description

We're looking for a second product engineer - someone who can take a problem and turn it into something people use, without being managed through it.

You need to be a strong full-stack engineer who cares about how software feels to use. You need to be comfortable building solo - we have no dedicated design team, and you'll be making interface decisions as well as writing the code behind them.

With the pace AI tooling is moving, you're expected to stay current and build fast because of it. We use an agentic stack daily and expect you to as well.

This role sits at the intersection of engineering, interface and AI. You'd work alongside our Head of Product & Technology, who sets direction and still writes code - this isn't a role where you report to someone who left the tools behind. Beyond the two of you there's a data scientist and data engineering team.

About Ovation Rights

Ovation Rights is an independent custodian of theatrical rights. We acquire the rights and royalties in great theatrical works and look after them for the long term, backed by patient capital and deep industry experience.

It's an unusual place to be an engineer. The assets are plays and musical- some of them things you've seen, most of them things you'd recognise. The work is turning a business that has always run on relationships and paperwork into one that runs on good software.

We build our own products rather than buying them, and we're building several at once.

Stack: Python, FastAPI, Postgres, Next.js, TypeScript, and modern AI tooling throughout.

You will be:

Leading development of new features from problem statement to production, across several products.

Making the interface decisions, not just implementing someone else's. We have no designer and no plans to hire one.

Using AI and LLMs pragmatically - to accelerate development, power product features, and automate work that shouldn't need a person.

Working directly with the people who use it. They sit near you and they will tell you when it's wrong.

Owning the quality bar on what you ship - maintainable code, sensible tradeoffs, and knowing when good enough is good enough.

Working with real, consequential data. An error here doesn't produce a bad dashboard. It produces a bad decision about a lot of money.

Requirements

3-5 years as a full-stack or product-focused engineer in a startup or small team.

Highly self-sufficient. You can take a rough problem, define what good looks like, and build it without daily check-ins. You also know when to stop and ask - and you know the difference.

A vast set of experience shipping polished, user-facing features end to end, including the interface.

Obsessive about AI tooling. You've built with agents, loops or evals, not just autocomplete. You can show us.

Data modelling in production. You've worked on a relational schema in production and safely changed live data.

SQL to find the truth. Given a number that looks wrong, you can trace it to the cause.

Comfortable in ambiguity. Early-stage or high-autonomy environments, where the answer isn't written down anywhere.

Judgement. You check work carefully, including AI-generated work, and you spot the change that will cause trouble before it ships.

Useful, not required:

Fintech. Ledgers, statements, reconciliation, payment flows, audit trails. If you've built systems where the numbers have to balance and someone will check, a lot of that transfers directly.

Rights, licensing, music publishing, royalties or catalogue work, in any part of entertainment.

You don't need to know anything about theatre. We'll teach you the domain, and it's more interesting than you'd expect.