Founding AI Engineer

We're partnering with an ambitious, early-stage fintech business on a mission to transform how consumers engage with and improve their financial wellbeing. Having achieved strong early validation and entered its next phase of growth, the company is seeking a highly capable AI Engineer to become the first dedicated AI hire and ultimately build and lead the AI function. This is a rare opportunity to join at a formative stage, influence product direction, and create AI capabilities that sit at the heart of the customer experience. For the right individual, there is a clear pathway into a future Head of AI position, alongside meaningful equity participation.

The Role

This is not a traditional engineering role. You'll operate as a builder, architect, and strategic partner to the founders, helping shape both the AI roadmap and the wider product vision. The business sees AI as a core differentiator, not an add-on feature. You will be responsible for designing, building, and scaling intelligent systems that enhance customer engagement, personalisation, automation, and decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

• AI Product Development
  • Design and deploy AI-powered customer experiences
  • Build intelligent recommendation and personalisation systems
  • Create AI-driven workflows that deliver measurable user value
  • Rapidly prototype, test and launch new AI capabilities
• Agentic AI & Automation
  • Design and implement agent-based architectures
  • Build autonomous and semi-autonomous workflows
  • Develop multi-agent systems where appropriate
  • Leverage modern orchestration frameworks to improve customer outcomes
• AI Infrastructure & Architecture
  • Build scalable AI foundations and pipelines
  • Develop retrieval and knowledge-management systems
  • Implement evaluation, monitoring and governance frameworks
  • Ensure solutions are secure, reliable and production-ready
• Strategic Contribution
  • Work closely with founders on AI strategy
  • Help identify commercially valuable AI opportunities
  • Influence product direction and roadmap decisions
  • Act as the internal AI subject matter expert
• Future Leadership
  • Define the AI hiring strategy
  • Recruit and mentor future AI talent
  • Establish AI standards and best practices
  • Build and lead the AI function

What We're Looking For

Technical Experience

• Software engineering or machine learning engineering
• Proven experience building production AI applications
• Strong Python engineering capability
• Experience deploying AI products into real-world environments
• Experience with several of: LLM applications, Agentic AI frameworks, Multi-agent systems, RAG architectures, Vector databases, AI orchestration platforms, AI evaluation and observability tools, Model optimisation and fine-tuning

Mindset

We're particularly interested in individuals who:

• Thrive in startup environments
• Enjoy building from zero to one
• Think commercially as well as technically
• Are naturally curious about emerging AI capabilities
• Move quickly and take ownership
• Want to help build a company, not just a product

Ideal Backgrounds

• Senior AI Engineer
• Lead AI Engineer
• Founding AI Engineer
• Applied AI Engineer
• AI Product Engineer
• Machine Learning Engineer (LLM Focus)
• AI Solutions Architect

What's on Offer

• Competitive salary
• Meaningful equity opportunity
• Direct access to founders and strategic decision-making
• Significant autonomy and ownership
• Flexible working environment
• Clear progression pathway to Head of AI

Why This Role?

Few opportunities offer the chance to join at such an early stage and genuinely shape the future of a business. If you're excited by ownership, AI innovation, startup pace, and the opportunity to build a function from the ground up, we'd love to hear from you. Apply in confidence for a confidential discussion.