Founding AI Engineer (City of London)

Senior AI Engineer opportunity

This role is not for Talentful but for one of our clients

£100,000 - £125,000 + Significant early-stage equity package

About the Company

We are a dynamic and innovative company at the forefront of revolutionizing financial analysis. We are building a sophisticated AI co-pilot designed to empower financial analysts, enabling them to cut through market noise, perform deep contextual analysis, and generate instant, actionable insights across a wide range of companies. Traditional AI tools in finance often stop at surface-level summaries; we're creating a proactive partner that understands the nuances of financial research.

Our founding team combines significant experience in finance and technology. One founder has a strong track record of building and growing a successful investment fund. The other founder has a deep background in software engineering for financial institutions and venture capital investing.

We are a lean, ambitious team, rapidly developing our product from our central London office, and we're looking for exceptional individuals to join us in shaping the future of financial research.

The Opportunity

This is a unique opportunity to be a pivotal member of our early engineering team. As a Founding AI Engineer, you won't just be coding; you'll be instrumental in architecting and building the core AI capabilities that define our platform. You'll work in a flat, founder-led structure, with immense scope for impact and autonomy.

What you'll do

• Build End-to-End AI Features: Take ownership of the full lifecycle of AI-driven features. This includes designing and implementing robust microservices (using languages like Go/Python) for critical functions such as document processing, data validation, and the integration of external financial data sources.
• Develop Advanced AI Pipelines & Workflows: Dive deep into crafting and optimizing sophisticated AI pipelines. This involves extensive prompt engineering, building and refining Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, and developing agentic AI workflows that deliver powerful analytical capabilities to our users.
• Master the Domain: Immerse yourself in the world of financial analysis. You’ll work closely with domain experts (our founders and early users) to understand their workflows and challenges, ensuring the AI solutions you build are not just technically excellent but also deliver transformative value.
• Drive Product Innovation: Your insights will directly influence our product roadmap. You’ll prototype rapidly, measure efficacy, iterate based on feedback, and ensure our AI systems are observable and scalable.
• Collaborate and Elevate: Work alongside a small, highly skilled team of engineers, contributing to a culture of technical excellence and rapid execution. While this is primarily an individual contributor role, your expertise will naturally guide best practices.

What You'll Bring

• Exceptional Engineering Prowess (a 10x builder): You are a highly effective and knowledgeable engineer with a proven ability to turn ambiguous problems into deployed, high-quality code quickly. You thrive on making things happen.
• Hands-On LLM/AI Experience: You have demonstrable experience building and shipping meaningful projects (at work or independently) using modern AI tools and techniques (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini APIs; RAG, agent frameworks, prompt engineering). Showcasing this via a portfolio, open-source contributions (e.g., a GitHub repo), or detailed project walkthroughs is highly encouraged.
• Tinkerer's Spirit & Entrepreneurial Drive: You are deeply curious about the AI ecosystem and have likely experimented extensively. Experience with side-hustles or startup environments (successes or insightful failures) is a strong plus, demonstrating your initiative and resilience.
• Full-Stack Pragmatism: You are comfortable working across the stack, including backend services (Go/Python), cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS), data pipelines, and the necessary frontend components (e.g., React) to bring features to life.
• Product and Customer Obsession: You are driven by delivering real value to users. You think critically about user needs and measure your success by their impact.
• Keen Interest in Finance & Markets: You have a genuine curiosity about financial markets, company analysis, or investment strategies. You're willing to learn the language of financial research to build the best tools.

Nice-to-Haves

• Some career exposure to financial markets either in financial research, investment banking, asset management, or financial data analytics.
• Experience working in high-growth tech companies or startups.
• An academic background from a top-tier university.
• UK-based (though not essential for the right candidate).

Why Join Us Now?

• Ownership: Influence architecture, culture and product direction from day one—and share in the upside via equity.
• Solve Challenging, Meaningful Problems: Tackle complex challenges at the intersection of AI and finance, building tools that will redefine an industry.
• Rapid Growth & Learning: Develop your expertise with the latest LLMs and AI techniques in a fast-paced, agile environment with short feedback loops and frequent releases.
• Exceptional Environment: Work from our beautiful central London office, with a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package you'd expect from a well-funded, ambitious startup.
• Direct Collaboration with Experienced Founders: Learn from and work directly with founders who have deep expertise in both finance and technology.

Hiring Process

We aim for a transparent and efficient process, typically within 7-10 days from application to offer:

1. Founder Introduction (15 mins): A conversation to discuss your background, motivations, and your experience as a builder.
2. Technical Interview(s) (approx. 90-120 mins total): This may involve a live pair-programming session focusing on a practical AI problem and/or a system design discussion.
3. Culture & Founder Fit (45 mins): A chance to discuss values, working styles, and your interest in the financial domain.
4. Offer: If there's a mutual fit, we'll move quickly to an offer.

Start Date

ASAP – we are looking to make this hire ideally within the next month but will wait for the perfect candidate.

Ready to Build the Future of Financial Research?

If you're an ambitious AI engineer excited by the prospect of building transformative technology in the finance space, we'd love to hear from you.

Please email a dedicated careers address with your CV and a cover letter or note detailing your relevant experience and why you’re interested in this opportunity. Please include links to any public repositories (e.g., GitHub), portfolios, or projects you’d like to share.

Let’s build something remarkable together.