Founding Engineer

About the job

This is an opportunity to join a start up as a Founding Engineer and help build the relational layer for people who want real connection in a world full of noise. Human relationships are the most valuable thing in people's lives, yet the tools designed to support them have never truly evolved. We're changing that by using AI not to replace human connection, but to deepen it.

This start-up is building the infrastructure for stronger communities, helping people build and maintain meaningful relationships at scale. We've already validated our initial wedge with community leaders and are now building the next generation of relational intelligence tools.

We're looking for a Founding Engineer to work directly alongside the CTO and help architect, build, and scale the platform from the ground up.

This is a founding-level opportunity where your technical decisions, engineering culture, and product instincts will shape the future of the company.

What You'll Work On

→ Build and ship the core agent architecture powering the platform, including orchestration, memory systems, evaluation frameworks, and human-in-the-loop workflows.

→ Own the platform end-to-end across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and data.

→ Design and develop integrations with community platforms including Slack, Circle, WhatsApp, calendars, and other communication tools.

→ Build scalable multi-tenant systems and data pipelines that power the relational intelligence layer.

→ Work closely with the CTO on architecture, framework selection, model routing, and technical strategy from day one.

→ Help establish engineering standards, development workflows, and the culture future hires will inherit.

→ Leverage AI-assisted development tools including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, MCP servers, and custom engineering workflows.

What We're Looking For

We're excited to connect with engineers who bring:

Full-Stack Excellence: You can take products from database schema to polished user experience without needing handoffs.

Startup Builder Mindset: You've built and shipped products in fast-moving environments and enjoy creating from zero rather than maintaining legacy systems.

AI Systems Experience: You have hands-on experience building production AI applications, agentic workflows, RAG systems, or LLM-powered products.

Cloud-Native Expertise: Strong experience with GCP, AWS, or similar cloud platforms and modern infrastructure patterns.

Technical Leadership: You have strong architectural opinions, communicate them clearly, and enjoy shaping engineering culture.

Ownership Mentality: You care deeply about product outcomes, user experience, and solving meaningful problems.

Strong Signals

→ Experience with LangGraph, LangChain, Pydantic AI, Mastra, or similar frameworks.

→ Experience building multi-tenant SaaS platforms.

→ Experience with event-driven systems, data pipelines, and integrations.

→ Previous startup experience at pre-seed or seed stage.

→ Experience taking products from concept to production.

Compensation & Commitment

→ £70,000–£120,000 salary

→ equity depending on experience and commitment

→ UK employment sponsorship available

→ Opportunity to join at a true founding stage and help shape both product and company direction

Next Steps

To get started, sign up to Foundermatcha and complete a short conversation with our AI matching system.

This helps us understand your technical background, experience with AI systems, working style, startup interests, and what you're looking for in your next founding opportunity.

From there, we'll introduce you to founders whose vision, values, and ambitions align with yours.