Software Engineer

Understanding Recruitment; Greater London; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Understanding Recruitment partners with a bold AI startup in London to hire exceptional graduate and early-career Software Engineers for an AI-native financial modelling platform. You will join a small, elite engineering team and work on challenging problems across AI, software performance, and product engineering.

You’ll own features end-to-end, contribute from day one, and learn fast in a highly autonomous environment. Relocation and sponsorship are provided for exceptional candidates.

Qualifications

• Graduated from a top university with an exceptional academic record.
• Internships at elite technology, trading or quantitative firms.
• Demonstrated exceptional problem-solving and programming ability.
• Experience with Rust, TypeScript, React or AI agents.

Responsibilities

• Building and shipping production software across the stack.
• Owning features end-to-end from backend to frontend.
• Using AI coding tools to accelerate development.
• Building and improving AI agents, their tools, harnesses and context optimisation.
• Writing high-performance software and tackling challenging optimisation problems.
• Collaborating closely with design to build polished, intuitive product experiences.

Skills

Exceptional technical ability

High agency

Intellectual curiosity

AI-native mindset

Speed + quality

Competitive mindset

Long-term potential

Education

Top university degree

Mathematics or Computer Science

Olympiad participation

Elite internships

Tools

Rust

TypeScript

React

AI agents

LLM tooling

Job description

Are you a recent graduate or early-career engineer with an exceptional technical track record?

Have you studied at a top university, completed internships at leading technology or trading firms, or competed at the highest levels of programming and mathematics?

Software Engineer – AI x Financial Modelling

Salary: Up to £130k DOE + equity

Location: London - onsite 5 days per week

Will relocate and sponsor

Experience: Exceptional engineers 0-2 years

I’m excited to be working with a very ambitious AI startup reinventing how businesses make some of their biggest decisions. They’re building an AI-native financial modelling platform – essentially Cursor for financial modelling in Excel.

Financial modelling underpins some of the world’s biggest decisions across M&A, private equity, investment, corporate strategy and consulting, yet the tooling remains incredibly manual and outdated.

This team is building something fundamentally different.

They’re now looking for exceptional graduate and early-career Software Engineers to join a small, elite engineering team and work directly on some genuinely difficult technical problems across AI, software performance, financial modelling and product engineering.

This is not a traditional graduate role. You’ll be given significant responsibility from day one, working alongside engineers from some of the strongest technical environments in the industry.

They’re particularly interested in candidates who have:

• Graduated from a top university with an exceptional academic record
• Completed internships at leading technology, trading, quantitative or engineering companies
• Demonstrated exceptional problem-solving and programming ability
• Participated in and ideally placed highly in competitive programming contests, Olympiads or similar competitions
• Built impressive technical projects outside of university or internships
• A genuine passion for software engineering and solving difficult problems
• The ability to learn incredibly quickly and operate with high autonomy

You’ll work directly on:

• Building and shipping production software across the stack
• Owning features end-to-end, from backend services through to frontend
• Using AI coding tools such as Claude Code and Cursor to dramatically accelerate development
• Building and improving AI agents, their tools, harnesses and context optimisation
• Writing high-performance software and tackling challenging optimisation problems
• Working with TypeScript and Rust across a rapidly evolving product
• Debugging low-level issues and improving backend infrastructure and CI
• Collaborating closely with design to build polished, intuitive product experiences
• Taking increasing ownership as you develop into a technical leader

Strong signals could include:

• Competitive programming / ICPC experience
• Mathematics, Computer Science or another highly technical degree
• Olympiad participation or success
• Internships at elite technology, trading or quantitative firms
• Experience with Rust, TypeScript, React or AI agents
• Personal projects that demonstrate exceptional technical ability
• Experience working with LLMs and modern AI coding tools

Tech stack:

• Rust
• TypeScript
• React
• AI / LLM tooling
• Backend infrastructure & DevOps

What they’re looking for:

• Exceptional technical ability– you’re among the strongest engineers in your peer group
• High agency– you don’t wait to be told what to do; you figure things out and take ownership
• Intellectual curiosity– you love learning difficult concepts and getting to the bottom of complex problems
• AI-native mindset– you’re excited about using the latest models and tools to become a dramatically more effective engineer
• Speed + quality– you can move quickly without compromising engineering standards
• Competitive mindset– you enjoy challenging yourself and solving problems others find difficult
• Long-term potential– you want to grow rapidly and eventually own significant parts of a product

Why join?

• Join a tiny, exceptionally strong engineering team with backgrounds including Jane Street, Bloomberg, Cambridge and UCL
• Work alongside engineers who have competed at the highest levels of programming
• Get genuine ownership from the very beginning of your career
• Work at the cutting edge of AI-native software development
• Solve technically challenging problems across AI, Rust, TypeScript and high-performance systems
• Learn at an incredible pace alongside some of the best engineers around
• Opportunity to grow rapidly into a technical leader
• Help build a completely new category of AI product from the ground up

If you’re an exceptional graduate who wants to skip the traditional corporate graduate scheme and go straight into building ambitious, technically difficult products alongside an elite engineering team, this could be an incredible opportunity.

If you’ve got the academic results, competitive programming background, elite internships or technical projects to prove you’re exceptional, I’d love to hear from you.