Founding Lead AI Product Engineer

The Role: Ownership of the Agentic Product Stream
This represents a foundational appointment for the client where the incumbent will assume sole ownership for the entire agentic product development lifecycle, utilising state-of-the-art tools from Anthropic - specifically Claude Code and the Anthropic Agent SDKs.
Role
This is not a development role limited to executing predefined specifications. The successful candidate will be the singular driver of both the product strategy and its technical implementation. We maintain an operational structure without dedicated Product Managers. You will engage directly with the senior leadership team, making critical decisions regarding:

• The prioritisation of development initiatives, informed by direct customer feedback, market dynamics, and data analysis.
• The definition and measurement of product success metrics.
• The technical architecture and corresponding delivery roadmap.
  

The successful candidate will serve as a key technical leader within a small, high-autonomy team where profound ownership is the established standard.
Key Responsibilities And Ownership Areas
For the initial 6-12 months, this will function as a hands-on individual contributor role, working in close collaboration with the senior leadership team. The incumbent will be responsible for building the core product, defining the technical trajectory, and establishing the operational foundations for the engineering function. As the product matures and the team expands, there will be significant scope to contribute to the scaling of the engineering team.
Product Direction: Define the strategic roadmap based on comprehensive customer insight, market analysis, and product intuition. This includes direct engagement with customers, analysis of usage data, and making high-conviction product bets.
System Design: Architect and construct sophisticated multi-agent workflows leveraging Claude, encompassing tool use, structured output generation, system prompt refinement, and the implementation of robust guardrails.
Full-Stack Delivery: Deploy production-grade features across the platform, including real-time monitoring dashboards, policy enforcement engines, API integrations, and the agent orchestration layers.
AI Governance Intelligence: Develop systems for enterprise AI usage comprehension and control including the detection of shadow AI, comprehensive usage analytics, policy enforcement mechanisms, and regulatory compliance reporting.
Technical Leadership: Establish engineering best practices, make authoritative architecture decisions, and help define the future structure of the engineering team as it scales.
What We Need From You
Full-Stack Engineering: A minimum of 8 years experience in building and deploying production-grade software. The ideal candidate will be a technical generalist capable of conducting deep-dives into any requisite technology, with a demonstrated history of end-to-end system ownership.
Hands-On AI Development: Proven experience building production systems utilising Large Language Model APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.), including expertise in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), embeddings, prompt engineering, tool use, and structured outputs. A profound understanding of designing reliable and safe AI systems is mandatory.
Agentic Systems Experience: Experience in developing or operating with multi-agent architectures, orchestration frameworks, or autonomous AI workflows, coupled with a deep understanding of design patterns for creating reliable and controllable agent systems.
Strong Product Acumen: The demonstrated ability to operate effectively without a dedicated Product Manager, including the ownership of metrics, conducting customer conversations, and translating inherent ambiguity into clear product decisions.
Startup Mindset: The candidate must thrive in environments characterised by extreme ownership, rapid iteration cycles, and high autonomy, and be highly motivated by the prospect of building a core product from the ground up within a small, focused team.
Our Stack
The successful candidate must be comfortable navigating and contributing across a diverse range of technologies and possess a willingness to engage with any necessary technical domain.
Backend: TypeScript (Node.js), Rust
Frontend: Next.js, React, TailwindCSS
AI/ML: LLM APIs, embeddings, vector databases
Data: PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB, Prisma
Infrastructure: Azure / AWS, serverless architectures, Redis
Whats On Offer
Competitive Base Salary: Starting at £100k
Location: Remote-first within the UK
Meaningful Equity: A substantial ownership stake in the company's growth.
High Ownership: A role with founding-level impact-you will own the product from its inception.
Modern AI Stack: Access to and work with the latest LLMs and cutting-edge agentic frameworks, supported by an ample token budget.
Growth Trajectory: Role and responsibilities are projected to scale rapidly in correlation with product and team expansion.
Benefits Package

• 30 days annual leave
• AXA private healthcare
• Pension contribution
  

Corporate Culture
We firmly believe that superior products are created by small teams of exceptional individuals who assume complete ownership of their outcomes. We prioritise rapid execution, maintain uncompromising standards, and foster a culture of mutual support. If a superior approach is identified, the expectation is to implement it and this degree of autonomy is associated with both intensity and significant reward.
Recruitment Process
Our objective is to finalise the entire recruitment process within one week.

• Introductory Call (20 min): A preliminary discussion focused on motivation, relevant experience, and mutual cultural fit.
• Technical Deep Dive (60 min): An in-depth discussion on architecture and product problem-solving, with a specific focus on agentic systems design.
• Take-Home or Pair Session (2–3 hours): A practical exercise involving the construction of a small agentic workflow using Claude’s API.
• Team & Culture Conversation (45 min): An opportunity to meet the team and discuss working style alignment and corporate values.
• Formal Offer