Founding Engineer
Company description
Renting is broken. Poor information exchange means landlords reject good tenants but accept bad ones - and evictions cost double a year's rent on average.
Laddr's mission is to improve access to the rental and housing ladders using data. We've started with a tenant referencing platform that gives landlords and agents holistic tenant insights - so they can rent to people they trust.
We're live and working with agents representing more than 1000 properties. Now it's time for Laddr 2.0 - that means a new approach to speed of processing that takes us to scale. The referencing industry has got used to 1–5 day turnaround periods, resulting in missed opportunities, frustrating delays, and poor communication. We're changing that by building an instant reference - returning results in minutes, not days.
Role description
As Founding Engineer, you'll work directly with the co-founders to own the full technology strategy and you'll own the full technical strategy for Laddr 2.0, evolving our live platform into a scalable, automated referencing engine. You'll design the architecture that powers instant referencing - transitioning us from manual processes to a scalable platform.
The immediate priority is automating our referencing process to return results in minutes, not days. That means integrating a suite of verification APIs (identity, open banking, credit, compliance) into our existing React/TypeScript and Laravel/PHP platform, and designing the decision logic that powers automated outcomes.
This is a genuine founding role: high autonomy, significant equity, and the chance to shape a platform for the next stage of growth.
What You'll Do
- Own the tech roadmap and architect scalable systems from scratch, including future ML models that transform diverse tenant profiles into forecasts of financial risk and rental behaviour
- Build and integrate third-party APIs - open banking, identity verification, credit data, and more - to power instant referencing
- Redesign the tenant-facing journey to enable fast, high-completion referencing flows
- Collaborate with co-founders to define and build the products that come after automation
Qualifications
- 5+ years of full-stack or back-end development experience, with a track record of shipping production systems
- Strong experience with PHP/Laravel or a comparable backend framework. You'll be working in an existing production codebase from day one
- Experience with GDPR-compliant data handling
- Comfortable owning architectural decisions in an early-stage environment with limited structure
- A product mindset - you think about users, not just code
- Experience in PropTech, FinTech, or other regulated industries is strongly preferred
- Strong experience with API integrations - open banking, KYC/identity verification, or similar regulated data sources is a strong plus
- London-based or able to work within UK timezone
Compensation
A mixture of meaningful equity and salary, with the specifics up for discussion depending on what works for you. If you're looking to build something and own a meaningful piece of it, let's talk.
How We Work
Laddr is an early-stage team that moves fast, argues well, and takes ownership seriously. We value the person who spots a flaw in our thinking over the one who nods along - brutal honesty over hypocritical politeness. We hold strong opinions loosely, change our minds when the evidence demands it, and believe the freedom to fail is what gives us the freedom to succeed. If you're energised by ambiguity and want to build something from scratch with people who are genuinely passionate about the problem, you'll fit right in.