At a Glance
- Tasks: Own and ship AI-driven product features from start to finish.
- Company: Join Aurora, a digital-first lifestyle management platform for high achievers.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, equity, health benefits, tech budget, and lifestyle perks.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in a fast-growing company with innovative technology.
- Qualifications: 4+ years in software development, experience with AI/ML features, and strong collaboration skills.
- Other info: Dynamic team environment with opportunities for career growth and leadership.
The predicted salary is between 130000 - 150000 ÂŁ per year.
Salary: £130,000 – £150,000
Equity: 0.7% - 1%
In-person, with flexible remote days
European visa sponsorship available
About Aurora
Aurora is a digital-first lifestyle management platform built for the world’s highest-performing individuals and organizations. Our members include tier-1 founders, executives, athletes, and families who delegate complex, ongoing needs across travel, dining, experiences, luxury purchases, and health.
Aurora is mobile-first, conversational, proactive, and available 24/7 globally. Members interact with the product multiple times per day, often for time-sensitive, high-stakes decisions. This makes product quality, judgment, and system behavior directly visible to customers in real time.
Agentified premium lifestyle commerce represents a $10bn+ opportunity. Legacy concierge and lifestyle services rely on fragmented CRMs and manual workflows that do not scale. Aurora combines automation, AI agents, and expert human curators into a single system designed for speed, accuracy, and leverage.
We’ve seen exceptional early traction:
- 51% DAU, 95% WAU
- Transaction volume and member spend already outperforming industry benchmarks by 5Ă— within the first three months
Aurora is backed and chaired by Alex Macdonald, the most successful founder in this category. So far, we’ve:
- Raised >$5M from experienced operators and tier-1 investors
- Built a product with industry-leading engagement from paying members
- Collected a large, proprietary dataset of user context (preferences, calendars, health signals) that powers proactive AI behavior
We are now expanding the founding engineering team as we scale the product and the member base. Aurora is built in person from our offices in London, New York, and Los Angeles. The engineering team works primarily from our London office in Belgravia, with flexible remote days.
The role
We’re hiring a Founding Product Engineer to own and ship user-facing, AI-driven features end to end. This is a hybrid role that sits between engineering and product. You will be hands‑on technically, while also acting as the product owner for specific features. You’ll define problems, shape solutions, work directly with curators and stakeholders, and ensure what we ship actually delivers value to members.
You’ll work closely with the CTO, founders, backend and mobile engineers, and the operations team. Many of Aurora’s most important features live at the intersection of product judgment, ML systems, and agent orchestration - this role owns that intersection. This is a high‑ownership role. You will take ambiguous ideas, turn them into concrete systems, ship them to production, and iterate based on real customer usage and feedback. Over time, this role can evolve into senior product leadership, technical leadership, or a hybrid path, depending on your strengths and ambitions. Aurora attracts people who want to build their own companies. We treat this role as training for that level of ownership.
What you’ll do
- Own product features end-to-end, from problem definition to production, feedback, and iteration
- Act as product owner for assigned areas, balancing customer needs, technical constraints, and delivery speed
- Design and implement AI-powered workflows using LLMs, tools, and agentic systems
- Build and iterate on ML-driven features, including classification, ranking, extraction, and decision support
- Design agent flows that combine automation with human‑in‑the‑loop escalation
- Work closely with our internal domain experts to understand real operational pain points and opportunities for leverage
- Collaborate with engineers to ship reliable, scalable implementations
- Define success metrics and use qualitative and quantitative feedback to guide iteration
- Debug production issues related to AI behavior, data quality, or workflow design
- Contribute code across the stack where needed, with a bias toward shipping value
What we’re looking for
Experience
- 4+ years of experience building production software
- Proven experience shipping ML- or AI-powered features used by real customers, ideally at scale
- Experience working with LLMs, prompt design, tool calling, and agentic flows
- Strong understanding of how ML systems behave in production, including failure modes
Technical foundation
- Comfortable writing production-ready Python code
- Solid understanding of backend systems and APIs, even if not infrastructure-focused
- Experience working with data pipelines, embeddings, retrieval, or RAG-style systems
- Ability to reason about latency, cost, reliability, and quality trade-offs
Product mindset
- You naturally think in terms of user outcomes, not just implementation details
- Comfortable operating with ambiguity and incomplete information
- Able to define the “right” problem before jumping to solutions
- Willing to make pragmatic decisions and adjust quickly based on feedback
Collaboration
- Strong communicator who can work across engineering, product, and operations
- Comfortable taking ownership and being accountable for results
- Enjoys being close to customers and real usage
- Wants to work in person with a high-performance team
Nice to have
- Experience acting as a product owner or tech lead on specific features
- Familiarity with Django or similar backend frameworks
- Experience with human-in-the-loop systems or operational tooling
- Understanding of mobile or frontend constraints
- Exposure to regulated or high-trust environments
$2,000 Tech & Education budget
Complimentary Oura ring or Whoop
Complimentary longevity testing subscription
Lifestyle perks, events, and access opportunities
Full health benefits; 90% coverage, including full dental & vision
Complimentary dinners and evening transport
15 Flexible remote days per year
Founding Product Engineer (AI & Agentic Systems) employer: Aurora
Contact Detail:
Aurora Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Founding Product Engineer (AI & Agentic Systems)
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to people in your industry, especially those connected to Aurora. Use LinkedIn or even attend local meetups to make genuine connections. You never know who might help you land that interview!
✨Tip Number 2
Show off your skills! If you’ve got a portfolio or side projects, make sure to highlight them. Create a personal website or GitHub profile showcasing your AI-driven features and engineering prowess. This is your chance to shine!
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare for the interview like it’s the final exam! Research Aurora’s products and think about how you can contribute to their mission. Be ready to discuss your past experiences and how they align with the role of Founding Product Engineer.
✨Tip Number 4
Apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen. Plus, we love seeing candidates who take the initiative to engage directly with us. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!
We think you need these skills to ace Founding Product Engineer (AI & Agentic Systems)
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Your Passion for AI: When you're writing your application, let your enthusiasm for AI and agentic systems shine through. We want to see how your experience aligns with our mission at Aurora, so share specific examples of projects you've worked on that demonstrate your skills in this area.
Be Clear and Concise: Keep your application straightforward and to the point. We appreciate clarity, so avoid jargon and focus on what makes you a great fit for the Founding Product Engineer role. Highlight your key achievements and how they relate to the job description.
Tailor Your Application: Make sure to customise your application for Aurora. Reference our values and the specifics of the role in your cover letter and CV. This shows us that you've done your homework and are genuinely interested in being part of our team.
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way for us to receive your application and ensures you’re considered for the role. Plus, it gives you a chance to explore more about what we do at Aurora!
How to prepare for a job interview at Aurora
✨Know Your Stuff
Make sure you’re well-versed in AI and agentic systems. Brush up on your experience with ML-powered features and be ready to discuss specific projects where you've shipped similar products. Aurora is looking for someone who can own product features end-to-end, so show them you’ve got the chops!
✨Show Your Product Mindset
During the interview, demonstrate that you think about user outcomes, not just technical details. Be prepared to talk about how you define problems before jumping to solutions. Aurora values a product mindset, so share examples of how you've balanced customer needs with technical constraints.
✨Communicate Clearly
As a Founding Product Engineer, you'll need to collaborate across teams. Practice articulating your thoughts clearly and concisely. Use examples from your past experiences to illustrate how you’ve effectively communicated with engineers, product teams, and stakeholders to drive results.
✨Embrace Ambiguity
Aurora thrives on innovation and tackling ambiguous ideas. Be ready to discuss how you've navigated uncertainty in previous roles. Share instances where you took an unclear concept, defined the right problem, and turned it into a successful product feature. This will show them you can handle the high-ownership nature of the role.