Product Engineer

Overview

The way companies innovate is broken. The systems built to create and protect ideas can’t keep up with the pace of change. Today, 90% of S&P 500 company value is intangible (e.g., in intellectual property) - yet R&D and IP teams spend half their time buried in manual work, sifting through patents and paperwork instead of pushing the frontier forward. The tools of creating and protecting are stuck in the past. We’re here to fix that. Ankar is building the R&D tools for the AI era and defining what applied research will look like in the next 20 years. We’re building infrastructure and product experiences our customers rely on every day. You’ll translate messy, ambiguous problems into clean, dependable software—and you’ll do it at the cutting‑edge of AI.

What you’ll do:

• Build world-class product. Design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable systems and user‑facing product experiences that customers depend on.
• Ship fast and iterate constantly. Deliver quickly, learn from real feedback, and refine the product week by week with direct access to customers.
• Own end-to-end execution. Take full ownership of projects across frontend, backend, and deployment—from design to implementation to monitoring and maintenance.
• Partner deeply with teammates and customers. Collaborate closely with product, design, and customer‑facing teams and customers themselves to ensure what we build is useful, usable, and impactful.

What you'll bring:

• You’re a product‑minded, critical builder. You care deeply about what you build, and you have a track record of turning ideas into software that real users love.
• Software engineering experience, including building and shipping production systems end‑to‑end.
• Strong product intuition and experience partnering with design/product on user workflows.
• Strong systems thinking: ability to design reliable, maintainable software and debug complex issues across the stack.
• Experience in fast‑moving startups or high‑ownership environments.

What success looks like

• You ship meaningful product improvements weekly and build trust through consistent execution.
• You proactively identify what the product needs next, not just what’s assigned.
• You raise the bar for quality and velocity through strong engineering judgment.
• You design systems that scale with users and maintainability over time.

Culture at Ankar

Culture at Ankar is how we think, build, and operate. We’re building a generational company that redefines how the world’s best R&D teams create and protect ideas.

• Contrarian - we think from first principles: We think deeply, question assumptions, and build from first principles. The best ideas come from clarity and rigour.
• Creative - we build with taste: We’re building the R&D tools for the AI era and shaping what applied research looks like over the next 20 years. We care about precision, quality, and systems that last.
• Competitive - we play to win: We move with urgency and set a very high bar for ourselves and each other. Every win raises the bar. Every challenge sharpens us.

What we put behind our people

Building at the frontier takes exceptional people. We invest accordingly.

• Health Insurance: Full private health & dental coverage for you and your dependents.
• Pension: Flexible pension scheme with up to 5% employer matching on qualifying earnings.
• Food on us: Team lunches twice a week, plus dinner when working late in the office.
• Cycle to work: Green Commute initiative scheme (up to £3k) to help you get a new bike tax‑free.
• Way we work: We combine deep, in‑person collaboration (minimum 3 days/week in our Shoreditch office) with flexibility and trust. What matters is ownership, impact, and results, not where you work from.
• Visa sponsorship: Yes

Compensation

We believe exceptional people should be compensated accordingly. £96,000–£160,000 including equity (depending on experience).