Founding Engineer

Role details

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a founding engineering role at an early-stage AI infrastructure company building a production-grade gateway that sits between applications and hundreds of large language model providers. You'll work directly with the founders to shape the technical direction of a platform that powers reliability, observability, and cost optimisation for AI-first teams. This is a high-ownership, high-impact position for someone who thinks like a founder. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design and build core backend services within a pragmatic microservices architecture, primarily in Go. - Evolve and maintain the LLM gateway, including routing, failover, load balancing, and observability features. - Make architectural decisions that balance scalability, performance, and the speed demands of an early-stage product. - Select and work with a variety of SQL databases and distributed caches, choosing the right tool for each problem. - Contribute to infrastructure running on Kubernetes, and help redefine the stack as the product scales. - Collaborate closely with founders to influence product direction and technical strategy. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 5+ years of backend development experience, with strong hands-on expertise in Go (Golang). - Deep understanding of concurrency and practical experience with concurrent programming patterns. - Experience designing and operating microservices architectures, including API gateways. - Comfort working with multiple database types and distributed caching solutions, and the judgment to choose between them. - Ability to design architectures that are both pragmatic for the current stage and scalable for the future. - A track record of independently learning new technologies and frameworks. - Startup or high-growth environment mindset — strong ownership, bias for action, and comfort with ambiguity. - Right to work in the United Kingdom; visa sponsorship is not available for this role. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Competitive total compensation package with significant equity. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site in London, United Kingdom.