Product Engineer

Polaron is a spin‑out from Imperial College London, founded by Dr Isaac Squires, Dr Steve Kench, and Dr Sam Cooper. Our vision is to become the world leader at the interface between AI and materials, combining scientific rigour with engineering pragmatism to enable the next generation of sustainable, high-performance materials. Our work isn’t just about hard, scientific problems – it’s about the urgency and impact of solving them. Advanced materials underpin all aspects of modern life: from the batteries that power electric vehicles to the alloys used in turbines and the composites that make aircraft lighter. Accelerating how these materials are developed, designed, and manufactured has a direct impact on the world’s ability to build a more sustainable future.

We’re developing a cloud‑based SaaS platform that empowers materials engineers to use state‑of‑the‑art image‑based AI without friction, helping them generate insights and accelerate innovation with minimal effort.

Our key stats:

• Team of 12 people today, growing fast.
• Based in East London (Shoreditch Exchange, Hoxton).
• Backed by cutting‑edge research and strong industry partnerships.

Stack: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Express, Prisma, Python (PyTorch), PostgreSQL, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform.

What we’re building: At Polaron, we’re building the next generation of tools that enable materials scientists and manufacturers to leverage state‑of‑the‑art AI vision models, all without ever leaving their web browser. Our application consists of:

• A data-intensive visual interface that enables users to explore, interact with, and analyse complex datasets (including high‑resolution image data) directly in the browser built for performance and fluidity at scale.
• Interactive visualisation and analysis tools that combine 2D, 3D, and graph plotting.
• A computational orchestration layer that connects the frontend experience with machine learning models, allowing users to run sophisticated analyses and simulations seamlessly.
• Scalable AI infrastructure for training, serving, and executing complex machine learning workflows across distributed environments.

Why we’re hiring: We’re entering a phase of rapid product and infrastructure scaling. To support this growth, we’re hiring a Product Engineer who will work at the intersection of UX, product, and technical execution, and wants to shape how customers interact with frontier technology in materials science. This is a hands‑on, high‑ownership role for someone who wants to build the core technology that enables the world’s most advanced materials to be developed and manufactured. You’ll have the freedom to make architectural decisions, work closely with scientists and engineers, and see your code directly power breakthroughs in industry and research. This role reports directly to our Head of Engineering and offers a significant degree of autonomy and influence over technical decisions and product direction.

A snapshot of your first 6 months at Polaron:

• Month 1 – Understand and Contribute: Learn Polaron’s product architecture and design system, deliver scoped product improvements, build confidence in deploying to production and gathering feedback.
• Month 3 – Take Ownership: Lead the development of a complete user‑facing feature, collaborate with Forward Deployed Engineers and scientists to turn a customer need into a working product, improve usability and design quality across the app.
• Month 6 – Drive Impact: Own a key area of the product end‑to‑end (e.g. image canvas, analysis, workflow builder), deliver measurable improvements to usability, performance, and visual quality, shape UX principles and front‑end standards as the team scales.

Our hiring process:

• Intro Call (20 min) get to know you, your experience, and your motivation.
• Technical Pairing (1 hr) collaborative coding session over video call.
• Paid Trial Day work with the team on a real engineering challenge (remote or onsite).
• Final Debrief & Offer.

We value transparency and fast feedback at every step. You’re a product‑minded engineer who takes pride in building elegant, intuitive interfaces for complex technical systems. You have:

• 3+ years of experience building modern web applications with React (or an equivalent framework) and TypeScript.
• Strong UX and design sensibility, with the ability to turn loose requirements into intuitive, user‑friendly features.
• A desire to write reliable, maintainable, well‑tested code, while being willing to rapidly prototype features when needed.
• Experience building backend APIs, and understand how to design clean, reliable interfaces. We use Node, Express, and Prisma, so experience with those (or similar frameworks) is a plus.

Bonus points for:

• Experience working with data‑intensive or visualisation‑heavy user interfaces (D3, canvas, Three.js, WebGL, or similar).
• Familiarity with Python or scientific/engineering workflows.
• Previous work in SaaS or technical B2B products.

Mindset and values: We’re looking for someone who:

• Is user‑obsessed, driven to turn complex tech into intuitive, elegant experiences.
• Iterates fast, values feedback, and isn’t afraid to prototype or pivot.
• Balances design taste with engineering rigour.
• Communicates openly and collaborates across disciplines.
• Thrives in a startup environment: ambiguity, ownership, and rapid learning.

Team and culture: You’ll join a small, tight‑knit group of engineers and scientists who are building Polaron’s product and culture together. We operate with:

• High trust and ownership.
• Pragmatism over dogma.
• Curiosity, humility, and scientific discipline.
• A strong focus on quality, impact, and long‑term maintainability.

What we value at Polaron:

• STEM mindset: genuine curiosity for science and the physical world.
• Hunger to learn: proactive, self‑driven, and impact‑oriented.
• Pragmatism: you prefer solutions that work over theoretical perfection.
• Low ego & empathy: you lift others up, you listen, you share knowledge.
• Long‑term commitment: you want to grow with the company and shape its journey.

Compensation and perks:

• Salary: £75 – £95 depending on experience.
• Equity: meaningful stock options in a growing company.
• Holidays: 25 days + 2 “festive leave” days.
• Perks: gym membership, free barista coffee.

Location: Shoreditch Exchange (Hoxton, London).