Founding Engineer

Building and scaling founding and early-stage AI/ML and engineering teams across the UK

This is not a typical engineering role. As a Founding Engineer, you’ll help define both the technology and the company.

You will:

• Build adaptive AI security systems
• Design and ship security infrastructure that learns and evolves alongside the AI agents it protects
• Define a new control layer for AI systems
• This isn’t another monitoring tool it’s foundational infrastructure for AI making real-time decisions in regulated, high-stakes environments.
• Shape the product and strategy
• As part of the founding team, you’ll help define the problem space, influence product direction, and ensure technical decisions drive company outcomes.
• Full autonomy over architecture, tooling, and standards. Minimal process, no approval chains you ship, iterate, and help set the technical culture.

The team:

You’ll work directly with a small founding team with deep experience across:

• National security and intelligence operations
• Large-scale fintech and data platforms
• Early-stage B2B startups and go-to-market execution

What we’re looking for:

• Strong grasp of core architectural patterns
• Comfortable contributing across backend, frontend, and infrastructure when needed
• You’ve built systems from scratch before
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity and incomplete information
• You default to shipping, learning, and iterating over over-engineering

Nice to have:

• Experience in regulated industries (fintech, health, defence, govtech)
• Open-source work or projects in AI/ML
• Previous founding or very early-stage startup experience

How we work:

• Default to trust – high autonomy, minimal process
• Obsessed with impact – outcomes matter more than activity
• Work intentionally – deep focus when needed, high-bandwidth collaboration when it counts

Seniority level

Mid-Senior level

Employment type

Full-time

Job function

Information Technology

Industries

Computer and Network Security and Technology, Information and Media

Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at Orange Quarter by 2x

London, England, United Kingdom