Lead AI Systems Developer (Founding Engineer) in Nottingham

IMPORTANT - UK based applicants only

About AXION4

AXION4 builds the intelligent operating infrastructure that businesses run on - AI, automation and custom software engineered into one connected system that measurably improves how a company performs. We work with real businesses across multiple sectors, diagnosing how each one actually operates - where it loses time, leads and margin - then designing and building the systems that fix it. Our principle is simple: we don’t automate chaos, we engineer clarity first.

The Role

We’re hiring our first engineer - a founding technical role with genuine ownership and a clear arc. You’ll start hands-on, turning specifications into working, deployed, reliable systems. As we grow, you’ll set the engineering standards, choose how we build, and lead the delivery team. And because you’ll understand both the technology and the commercial problem behind it, you’ll move beyond building to specification toward shaping the solution itself. The path: senior builder, to Head of Development, to a technical mind that helps architect what we build.

Who You Are

You’ve spent the last five to ten years building software and leading the people who build it. You understand engineering deeply - from the fundamentals up, not just framework-deep - and you’ve shipped real, production systems end to end. You’ve also fully embraced the AI wave. You use the latest AI tooling to accelerate and elevate your craft - not as a crutch, but as a multiplier - and you can tell the difference between AI that adds real value and AI for its own sake. You are the rare engineer who has merged classical engineering depth with AI-native speed. And you think commercially. You can sit with a business owner, understand how their business makes money and where it leaks it, and translate that into the right system - not just the one you were handed. That instinct is what takes you from building systems to designing them.

What You’ll Do

• Take detailed specifications and build to them - AI-enabled workflows, automations, integrations, dashboards, portals and custom applications.
• Own the codebase, repositories and delivery environment, and keep every build maintainable, documented and reliable.
• Establish the engineering standards, reusable components and patterns that make each build faster than the last.
• Run QA, testing and deployment so releases are repeatable and dependable.
• Scope, estimate and stress-test solutions alongside the founders - and increasingly, help shape them.
• As the pipeline grows, hire, onboard and mentor developers, and build the delivery function you’ll lead.

What You’ll Bring - Essential

• Five to ten years (or more) building software professionally, including time leading or running development teams.
• Deep engineering fundamentals and a track record of shipping production systems end to end.
• Genuine fluency with modern AI and LLM tooling, and the habit of using AI-assisted development to move faster without dropping quality.
• Commercial insight - the ability to understand a business problem and design technology that solves it, not just code that runs.
• The autonomy and judgement to be the first technical hire: setting standards rather than inheriting them, in a remote, fast-moving environment.

Your Technical Breadth

We’re deliberately tool-agnostic - we choose the right stack for each build, so we don’t require any single one. What we need is genuine breadth and the judgement to pick well. You’ll likely have worked across several of:

• Languages wiring CRMs, payments, comms and third-party platforms into one coherent system.
• Automation how you’ve merged deep engineering with the latest AI tooling; and a time you understood the commercial problem behind the build.

We read every one. As part of the application process we may ask you to build a mini project from scratch, in order to assess your discipline in planning, execution, versioning, testing and deployment etc. Good luck to all applicants.