Software Engineer – Backend (On-site)

JR United Kingdom; Northampton; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A stealth-mode AI lab in London seeks a Founding Engineer to design and develop backend infrastructure for Machine Learning workloads. Ideal candidates will have experience in cloud computing and distributed systems, with a strong emphasis on collaborative team practices and ownership of projects. This role offers competitive pay, equity, and opportunities for professional growth.

Benefits

Competitive salary and equity

28 days + public holidays leave

Professional growth opportunities

Challenging engineering problems

Collaborate with high-profile customers

Qualifications

• 2-3 years of experience in back-end development.
• Experience with cloud platforms and containerization.
• A curious mindset and strong analytical skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop highly-scalable and fault-tolerant systems.
• Mentor colleagues and establish best practices.
• Develop services in C# and manage AWS infrastructure.

Skills

Cloud computing

Distributed systems

Object-oriented programming

Analytical skills

Problem-solving

Communication

Tools

AWS

Terraform

C# (.NET 9)

Docker

Postgres

SNS/SQS

Redis

GitHub Actions

Job description

Location: London (Liverpool Street)

Employment Type: Full-time and Permanent

Remuneration (London; On-site): £70–90k Base Salary + Discretionary Bonus + Equity

Company: We are a stealth-mode AI laboratory researching and developing Machine Learning models. The founding team consists of Cambridge graduates and former engineers at Microsoft, Bloomberg, and Goldman Sachs. We are backed by prominent investors from the US and the UK, including institutional VC funds and C-level executives of global technology companies.

Role Overview: The role involves designing and developing backend infrastructure for Machine Learning workloads. You will work closely with the Machine Learning team, but no background in Machine Learning is required. We seek a software engineer experienced in cloud computing and distributed systems.

Responsibilities:

• Design and develop highly-scalable, fault-tolerant, and event-driven systems.
• Take ownership of tasks with a high degree of autonomy.
• Collaborate with the founding team to establish best practices, standards, and company culture.
• Mentor colleagues to raise the company's technical standards.
• Leverage AWS extensively, managing it with Terraform.
• Develop services in C# (.NET 9) and deploy via ECS or Lambda using GitHub Actions.
• Utilize Postgres, SNS/SQS, and Redis.
• Maintain good end-to-end test coverage to ensure confident deployments.

Candidate Requirements:

• At least 2-3 years of industry experience in back-end development, creating reliable and scalable systems with an object-oriented programming language.
• Experience deploying to cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), with knowledge of containerization (Docker), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), and observability tools (Datadog, Grafana).
• A curious mindset with a desire to learn and grow.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of engaging with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

We understand no candidate checks every box; passion for solving complex challenges and openness to learning are valued.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with Machine Learning, including generative models, LLMs, multi-modal models, and Deep Learning.
• Contributions to open-source projects.
• Experience in startup environments and the broader ecosystem.
• Experience working in cutting-edge AI research environments.
• Official role title of "Founding Engineer" — make an impact from day one.
• Competitive salary, equity, and benefits.
• 28 days + public holidays leave.
• Opportunities for professional growth and career progression.
• Work on challenging engineering problems with industry impact.
• Collaborate with high-profile customers and partners.