Founding AI Engineer

Founding AI Engineer → Future Head of AI

Venture-Backed FinTech Start up | Equity Opportunity | Manchester

We're partnering with an ambitious, early-stage fintech business on a mission to transform how consumers engage with and improve their financial wellbeing.

Having achieved strong early validation and entered its next phase of growth, the company is seeking a highly capable AI Engineer to become the first dedicated AI hire and ultimately build and lead the AI function.

This is a rare opportunity to join at a formative stage, influence product direction, and create AI capabilities that sit at the heart of the customer experience.

For the right individual, there is a clear pathway into a future Head of AI position, alongside meaningful equity participation.

The Role

This is not a traditional engineering role.

You'll operate as a builder, architect, and strategic partner to the founders, helping shape both the AI roadmap and the wider product vision.

The business sees AI as a core differentiator, not an add-on feature.

You will be responsible for designing, building, and scaling intelligent systems that enhance customer engagement, personalisation, automation, and decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

AI Product Development

Design and deploy AI-powered customer experiences
Build intelligent recommendation and personalisation systems
Create AI-driven workflows that deliver measurable user value
Rapidly prototype, test and launch new AI capabilities

Agentic AI & Automation

Design and implement agent-based architectures
Build autonomous and semi-autonomous workflows
Develop multi-agent systems where appropriate
Leverage modern orchestration frameworks to improve customer outcomes

AI Infrastructure & Architecture

Build scalable AI foundations and pipelines
Develop retrieval and knowledge-management systems
Implement evaluation, monitoring and governance frameworks
Ensure solutions are secure, reliable and production-ready

Strategic Contribution

Work closely with founders on AI strategy
Help identify commercially valuable AI opportunities
Influence product direction and roadmap decisions
Act as the internal AI subject matter expert

Future Leadership

As the business scales, you will:

Define the AI hiring strategy
Recruit and mentor future AI talent
Establish AI standards and best practices
Build and lead the AI function

What We're Looking For

Technical Experience

Software engineering or machine learning engineering
Proven experience building production AI applications
Strong Python engineering capability
Experience deploying AI products into real-world environments

Experience with several of:

LLM applications
Agentic AI frameworks
Multi-agent systems
RAG architectures
Vector databases
AI orchestration platforms
AI evaluation and observability tools
Model optimisation and fine-tuning

Mindset

We're particularly interested in individuals who:

Thrive in startup environments
Enjoy building from zero to one
Think commercially as well as technically
Are naturally curious about emerging AI capabilities
Move quickly and take ownership
Want to help build a company, not just a product

Ideal Backgrounds

Senior AI Engineer
Lead AI Engineer
Founding AI Engineer
Applied AI Engineer
AI Product Engineer
Machine Learning Engineer (LLM Focus)
AI Solutions Architect

What's on Offer

Competitive salary
Meaningful equity opportunity
Direct access to founders and strategic decision-making
Significant autonomy and ownership
Flexible working environment
Clear progression pathway to Head of AI

Why This Role?

Few opportunities offer the chance to join at such an early stage and genuinely shape the future of a business.

If you're excited by ownership, AI innovation, startup pace, and the opportunity to build a function from the ground up, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply in confidence for a confidential discussion.