Founding Software Engineer

Founding Software Engineer – Factory & Manufacturing Systems

Location: On-site, London (factory-based)

Salary: Up to £170,000 base + meaningful equity

Industry: Advanced Manufacturing / Defence / Aerospace / Industrial AI

The Company:

They are a very early-stage, software-first manufacturing company building a new industrial backbone for the West.

They are creating a network of small-to-medium, highly specialised factories (starting with CNC machining) and writing the software that runs each factory and orchestrates the entire network end-to-end.

The ambition is to scale from a handful of sites today to dozens (and eventually hundreds) across the UK/Europe and the US, powered by an in-house manufacturing operating system.

The team is sub-20 people.

There are no layers. Every engineer is building the core.

What You'll Do:

• Build core full-stack systems that run live factories (MES, operator tools, data platforms).
• Architect and ship software for quoting, scheduling, routing, and production orchestration.
• Work on-site with operators and leadership to identify bottlenecks and turn them into product.
• Own problems end-to-end: ambiguous need → design → build → deploy → operate → iterate.
• Help design the software foundations for a distributed factory network.

What We're Looking For:

• High-agency, independent builders who have worked in very early, fast-moving environments.
• Engineers comfortable without product managers, management layers, or predefined roadmaps.
• People motivated by real-world systems and visible impact, not purely digital products.
• Low-ego, pragmatic, strong engineering fundamentals, biased toward ownership and shipping.

Strong signals include: founding engineer / ex-founder experience, early engineer at tier-1 startups, or exposure to manufacturing, robotics, aerospace or defence.

A slight frontend / UX leaning (React/TypeScript) is a plus and a current team gap.

Years of experience matter less than the environments you've chosen and how you operate.

Tech:

TypeScript, React, Postgres, AWS (stack flexibility is fine for strong generalists)

Why You'll Thrive

• Your software runs real machines producing real components.
• You work inside the factory, not next to it.
• You help build a manufacturing OS from first principles.
• You get genuine founding-stage ownership and meaningful equity.
• You work on industrial problems with national-scale relevance.

This role is open to UK citizens only.