Senior Software Engineer

Wave Group; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Wave Group is seeking a Founding Engineer to join a stealth startup building the risk layer for agentic commerce in London. You’ll own end-to-end development from ML risk models to payment flows, working directly with the founders.

Ideal candidates have startup experience near a 0-to-1 success story, have shipped in a high-execution environment, and bring depth in ML infrastructure or payments. You’ll need high agency and the ability to make sharp calls with imperfect information.

Qualifications

• Experience shipping in early-stage startups or 0→1 builds.
• Ability to work with imperfect information and make sharp calls.
• Strong hands-on skills in ML infrastructure or payments.

Responsibilities

• Build the risk model: ML and rule-based approaches to assess risk in agentic commerce.
• Develop and embed payment flows, interfacing with agent commerce providers.
• Own the product end-to-end, from UX touchpoints to backend ML and payment orchestration, with founders directly.

Skills

ML infra

Payments

Startup experience

Decision making

Autonomy

Job description

Founding Engineer, Stealth Startup (Agentic Commerce) - London

I'm working with two experienced founders building something genuinely new: the trust layer for agentic commerce.

Soon, shopping will be agent led. You'll tell an agent what you want, and it'll go and buy it for you, autonomously. But right now, nobody can fully trust an agent with their money, because there's a real risk the agent buys the wrong thing. They're building buyer protection backed by a risk engine that solves exactly this, for consumers, agent builders, and merchants.

They're now hiring their first engineer to build it alongside them.

What the role involves:

• Build the risk model: supervised learning, LLM as judge, and other methods as needed, going from bootstrapped spreadsheets to a genuine risk engine, first of its kind for agentic commerce
• Build the payment flows: embed the risk harness into agentic payment protocols, working with the latest agent commerce providers, sometimes building flows from scratch alongside partners
• Own the product end to end: UX touchpoints, backend ML, and payment orchestration, working directly with the founders rather than a slice of a bigger team

What they're looking for:

• Startup experience, ideally close to a 0 to 1 success story
• Time spent shipping in an established company with a high execution bar
• Depth in at least one of ML infrastructure or payments
• A track record of making sharp calls with imperfect information
• High agency, low ego

The details:

3 days a week onsite (currently Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, not fixed)