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, and a tech budget.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in a fast-growing startup with innovative technology.
- Qualifications: 4+ years in software development with experience in AI and ML features.
- Other info: Dynamic team environment with opportunities for career growth and ownership.
The predicted salary is between 130000 - 150000 £ per year.
Salary: £130,000 – £150,000
Equity: 1–1.5%
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 behaviour 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 5× 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, and collected a large, proprietary dataset of user context (preferences, calendars, health signals) that powers proactive AI behaviour.
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 behaviour, 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
- 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
- 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 in London employer: Aurora
Contact Detail:
Aurora Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Founding Product Engineer in London
✨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 refer you for that Founding Product Engineer role!
✨Tip Number 2
Show off your skills! If you’ve built any AI-driven features or worked on ML systems, create a portfolio or GitHub repo showcasing your work. This will give us a clear idea of what you can bring to the table at Aurora.
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare for the interview by understanding our product inside and out. Familiarise yourself with how we combine automation and human expertise. Be ready to discuss how you can contribute to our mission of delivering high-quality, user-focused solutions.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen by the right people. Plus, it shows you’re genuinely interested in being part of the Aurora team!
We think you need these skills to ace Founding Product Engineer in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Your Passion: When writing your application, let your enthusiasm for the role shine through! We want to see that you’re genuinely excited about building innovative products and making a real impact at Aurora.
Tailor Your Experience: Make sure to highlight your relevant experience in AI and ML features. We’re looking for someone who can own product features end-to-end, so be specific about how your past work aligns with this responsibility.
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.
Apply Through Our Website: Don’t forget to submit your application through our website! It’s the best way for us to keep track of your application and ensure it gets the attention it deserves.
How to prepare for a job interview at Aurora
✨Know Your Stuff
Make sure you’re well-versed in the technical aspects of the role. Brush up on your experience with ML systems, LLMs, and Python coding. Be ready to discuss specific projects where you've shipped AI-powered features and how they impacted user outcomes.
✨Understand the Product
Dive deep into Aurora’s platform and its unique selling points. Familiarise yourself with how it combines automation and human curation. This will help you articulate how you can contribute to enhancing user-facing features and improving member experiences.
✨Show Your Problem-Solving Skills
Prepare to discuss how you approach ambiguous problems. Think of examples where you’ve defined the right problem before jumping to solutions. Highlight your ability to iterate based on feedback and real customer usage, as this is crucial for the role.
✨Communicate Effectively
Since collaboration is key, practice articulating your thoughts clearly. Be ready to explain complex technical concepts in simple terms, especially when discussing how you would work with curators and stakeholders to deliver value. Strong communication can set you apart!