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.

Founding AI Engineer Future Head of AI

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