Senior Founding Software Engineer

Senior Founding Software Engineer (tech lead), Eye-Health Platform

Location: Remote (UK-based preferred)

Reporting to: CEO (Dhruvin Patel)

Business: Ocushield: UK eye-health business with consumer products and a digital screening platform serving cash plans, insurers and corporate partners

About Ocushield

Ocushield is a UK eye-health business building both physical products and a digital eye-screening platform. We were founded by practising optometrists who saw a generation of people developing eye strain, fatigue and reduced focus earlier in life, driven by unprecedented screen use at work and at home.

Today we sit at the intersection of health, performance and modern work. Alongside our profitable direct-to-consumer business, we work with cash plans, insurers and direct corporate customers who see eye health as the next frontier of workplace wellbeing. Our consumer business is profitable and our digital ARR is growing, with active commercial conversations underway with major UK health and insurance partners.

We are now replatforming our digital screening product from a low-code tool to a native, data-centric platform. The tech lead, leads that work.

The role

You will lead the technical replatform of our digital eye-screening product to a native, data-centric platform. This is greenfield architecture from someone who has done it before.

You will be hands-on coding, setting the architecture, working with a contractor who maintains the existing build, and shaping the engineering function as we grow. You will work directly with the founder and our clinical lead, Dr. Raj Kohli. This is not a co-ordination role. We are looking for a senior builder who can set the technical direction and ship the first version themselves.

Why now

• Our existing low-code platform has validated demand but cannot support the next stage of customer engagement, partner reporting, the recommendation engine, ecommerce attribution or scalable B2B growth.
• The strategic goal is to turn the Screener into a vision-health engagement platform that captures structured, user-level data. A proprietary eye-health dataset is the long-term competitive moat.
• Scaling fast across multi-national enterprise clients
• Active commercial conversations with major UK health and insurance partners give the platform a clear demand signal.

What you’ll work on

• Architect and build a native eye-screening platform to replace our low code solution, with full ownership of stack choices.
• Build a user account system with progressive unlock, saved results and longitudinal tracking. Account creation before results is the central UX challenge: value needs to be visible both before and after sign-up to keep drop-off in check.
• Build the structured data-capture and reporting layer for B2B partners across cash plans, insurers and retail pilots.
• Build a recommendation engine that routes screening output to product and service recommendations, and captures why users ignore products, not just what they click.
• Design symptom follow-ups at 30 and 90 days as a re-test experience, rather than as marketing prompts.
• Manage the commercial relationship with the contractor who is maintaining the existing product in parallel.
• Work with our clinical lead on safety review and clinical correctness, which runs in parallel with the build.
• Shape the engineering hiring plan as the platform scales, likely one or two engineers in Year 2.
• Set the technical standards, review process and operating model for the engineering function.
• Brief and collaborate with our design/UX team member on user research and journey design, particularly the account creation flow which is the single biggest UX challenge for the replatform
• Own the technical contribution to product trade-off conversations: feature sequencing, scope cuts, technical debt acceptance

What you’ll bring

Experience

• 6+ years’ engineering experience, with at least 2 to 3 years leading platforms end to end.
• Strong full-stack capability on a modern web stack. Stack preferences are below; we are open to a candidate proposing alternatives.
• Experience with greenfield builds and with legacy systems running in parallel.
• Data-platform thinking. You understand the difference between collecting data and building a structured dataset that compounds in value.
• Experience hiring and managing engineers.

Mindset

• Comfortable as a hands-on builder, not just an architect. You write production code.
• Comfortable in a startup or early-stage scale-up environment, with ambiguity and direct ownership.
• Pragmatic about trade-offs between speed, quality and what to leave for later.

Tech stack preferences

We have a working view of the stack but are open to the right person proposing alternatives:

• TypeScript and Node.js, or Python, on the backend.
• React or Next.js on the frontend.
• PostgreSQL or a similar relational database for structured data.
• Cloud-native on AWS or GCP.
• API-first design.
• Modern data tooling such as dbt, with an awareness of event streaming.

Nice to have

• Health-tech or regulated-industry experience, ideally medical-device adjacent or with GDPR-sensitive data.
• B2B or B2B2C SaaS experience, particularly where employers or insurers are the buyer and employees are the users.
• Experience integrating with insurer or benefits-platform APIs.
• Experience with recommendation engines or personalisation.
• Patent-eligible algorithm work. IP creation matters to us.
• Familiarity with Embeddables or other low-code platforms, useful for the migration phase.

How we work

• Remote-first and async-friendly.
• Small team, fast moving, founder-led.
• Weekly stand-ups and quarterly off-sites.
• We ship and iterate. We do not build for perfection.
• Our clinical lead works alongside engineering on feature accuracy and safety.

💚 Why Join Ocushield?

👁️ Purpose-driven work Build technology that helps people protect their vision in a screen-heavy world. Real health outcomes, not vanity metrics, with products trusted by major UK healthcare partners.

🚀 Build something meaningful Architect our digital eye-health platform from low-code to a native, data-centric stack. Greenfield work that compounds in value over time as the proprietary clinical dataset grows.

🎯 Real ownership Work directly with the founder and our clinical lead. Decisions get made in days, not quarters. No middle layer between you and strategy.

🧠 Hands-on craft This is a building role, not a managing role. You write production code, set the architecture, and shape the engineering function as we grow.

🌱 Profitable and scaling We are not a burn-rate startup. The business is profitable, the digital platform is growing fast, and the platform you build powers the next phase.

Why you shouldn't apply

• You need rigid structure and fixed specifications
• You want a large team around you from day one
• You prefer maintaining systems over building new ones
• You’re not comfortable owning outcomes end-to-end
• If the idea of building something new, scrappy, and impactful excites you — not scares you — then you’ll thrive at Ocushield.

Compensation

• Remuneration up to £85,000 with stock options
• Pension, holiday and equipment budget on standard terms.
• Remote-setup support.