Senior Software Engineer
OpenOpportunity
We are looking for a software engineer who is passionate about AI. You will design, build, and deploy custom AI systems for key clients.
You will work closely with client teams. Together, you will turn complex operational problems into production systems that deliver measurable results quickly.
This is a hands-on role. You will define the architecture, build the product, and oversee the AI coding agents that contribute code.
You will work across different industries and business problems. You will also help shape our internal products and technical direction.
Why join us
- Take ownership of client outcomes, from early discovery through to production.
- Solve difficult operational problems where the quality of the solution matters.
- Flat hierarchy. Small teams and no politics. You are encouraged to challenge others and be challenged so that we can get to the best ideas and solutions.
- Learn from founders who have built and sold businesses.
- Build knowledge across several industries. This experience will increase your value in the job market.
Example projects
Some projects we have worked on:
What you will do
- Translate complex business problems into clear technical plans for AI systems.
- Design and build full-stack AI applications, from data processing through to the user interface.
- Deploy systems in cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.
- Run client workshops and document solutions for a successful handover.
- Work with our internal research and development team to shape the core technology roadmap.
- Monitor and tune production systems so that they continue to deliver value and meet agreed KPIs.
Who you are
This role suits someone who combines strong engineering skills with sound product judgement and clear client communication.
You can turn an unclear business need into a focused production system. You favour useful working software over unnecessary technical complexity.
You work well with limited direction. You take responsibility for quality, timelines, and the value of the final product.
You also use AI coding agents to increase your output. You still maintain strong development standards, reliable tests, and clean collaboration in a shared codebase.
Key requirements
You have:
- 6+ years shipping production software and operating it in the real world (incidents, on-call, post-mortems, performance tuning).
- Strong delivery judgement: you can pick pragmatic architectures, cut scope intelligently, and keep momentum as requirements evolve.
- A track record of taking products from discovery → MVP → production, with clear success metrics.
Engineering
- Full-stack strength (e.g. TypeScript/Node + React or Python + FastAPI/Django or similar) and the ability to own features end-to-end.
- System & API design: service boundaries, data models, reliability patterns, and clean interfaces.
- Deployment & ops: Docker, CI/CD, observability (logs/metrics/traces), and running workloads on AWS/GCP/Azure (or on-prem).
- Deep hands-on experience with LLM systems:
- RAG (chunking, embeddings, retrieval strategies), prompt/tooling patterns, and grounding.
- Evaluation (offline/online, golden sets, regression tests, guardrails) and iterating based on results.
- Building data pipelines for ingestion, cleaning, and incremental updates.
- Experience with AI frameworks (e.g. Pydantic AI) and/or custom implementations when frameworks get in the way.
- Comfort using AI coding agents to move faster without compromising quality (tests, reviews, linting, and maintainable code).
- Ability to raise engineering standards in a small team: testing strategy, code review norms, and “production-ready” definitions.
Product
- Practical product thinking: you can translate user needs into simple flows and iterate quickly with real feedback.
Client
- Strong technical communication: you can run discovery sessions, write clear solution docs, set expectations, and earn trust with stakeholders.
Useful experience
These are useful but not required:
- The ambition to oversee several projects and engineering squads.
- Experience managing servers and services that run on client sites.
- AI experience in specialised industries such as finance, healthcare, or field services.
- Experience with multimodal models, voice processing, or edge deployment.
- Experience as a founder or early employee at a seed-stage company.
Role fit
This role is unlikely to suit:
- Junior developers who need substantial on-the-job training.
- Engineers who prefer little client contact.
- People who need constant direction or detailed task specifications.