Founding Engineer / Technical Lead

Full-time | Permanent | Salary + Meaningful EquityWe’re looking for an experienced, hands-on Founding Engineer / Technical Lead to take technical ownership of an existing SaaS platform and play a major role in the next stage of the business.This isn’t a greenfield build. We already have a working product, real customer engagement, funding behind the business and a significant commercial opportunity in front of us.What we need now is someone who can take what exists today and make it significantly better, quickly.Our immediate priority is getting the platform into the best possible shape for a major customer pilot over the next three months. That means improving what needs improving, fixing what needs fixing, making sensible architectural decisions and, most importantly, shipping.The opportunityYou’ll become the senior technical owner of the platform, working directly with the founders and taking responsibility for turning commercial priorities into shipped software.Initially, this is a highly hands-on engineering role. You’ll be writing, reviewing, debugging and deploying production code—not managing a large engineering team or spending weeks designing the theoretically perfect architecture.You’ll have significant autonomy over technical decisions and the opportunity to shape how the product, architecture and engineering capability develop as the company grows.What you’ll ownGetting rapidly up to speed with the existing codebase and architectureTaking ownership of technical decisions and day-to-day engineering deliveryShipping product improvements quickly while maintaining reliabilityWorking through customer and pilot-critical requirementsDeciding which technical debt needs addressing now and what can waitImproving stability, security, observability and deployment confidenceBreaking ambiguous commercial requirements into deliverable technical workWorking directly with founders, customers and other stakeholdersShaping the longer-term technical roadmapHelping build the engineering team and capability as we scaleYour first 90 daysThe first three months will be demanding and potentially one of the most important periods in the company's development.Within 30 days, we’d expect you to understand the platform, architecture and deployment model, identify the major technical risks and start shipping meaningful improvements.By 60 days, you should be owning technical delivery with limited founder involvement, consistently shipping against commercial priorities and have removed or mitigated the biggest risks to the customer pilot.By 90 days, the platform should be in strong shape for the pilot, with you owning the technical roadmap and having a clear view of what needs to happen to take the product from early-stage SaaS to a scalable commercial platform.What we’re looking forYou’ll probably have:Significant professional software engineering experienceStrong TypeScript / JavaScript experienceExperience with React / Next.js and Node.js / NestJS or similar technologiesStrong PostgreSQL and relational database experienceExperience designing APIs and distributed integrationsGood knowledge of cloud infrastructure, containers, CI/CD and production operationsExperience diagnosing difficult production issues across application and infrastructureStrong architectural judgement without being dogmatic about architectureExperience in startups, scale-ups or similarly fast-moving environmentsConfidence challenging technical or product decisions when necessaryThe ability to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholdersMost importantly, you get things finished.You’ll probably enjoy this role if...You like inheriting complicated systems and figuring out how they actually work.You’d rather ship something valuable this week than spend months designing the theoretically perfect system for next year.You’re comfortable making decisions with incomplete information, taking ownership without waiting for tickets, and moving between product thinking, architecture, debugging and coding.You also want to be close to the commercial side of the business and understand why what you’re building matters to customers.This probably isn’t the right opportunity if you’re looking for a highly structured environment, narrowly defined responsibilities, a mature engineering organisation or a predictable backlog.Why join?This is an opportunity to join an early-stage company at a point where the person leading technical execution can have an outsized impact on what happens next.The business is funded, the product already exists, customers are engaged and we’re working towards a significant commercial opportunity.In return, we’re offering:Competitive salaryMeaningful equity participationSignificant autonomy over technical directionDirect access to founders and customersThe opportunity to shape the product and engineering organisationA route into broader technical leadership as the company scales