Spectrum Search
Founding Engineer
Requirements
Candidates need at least two years of full-stack, founding, or forward-deployed engineering experience at a high-growth startup, with a record of 0-to-1 ownership and customer engagement alongside platform engineering. A STEM degree from a top-50 international university and the ability to work five days a week in Vauxhall are required; founder experience and familiarity with Python, AWS, SQL, and React are desirable.
Job Description
We’re working with a fast-growing, venture-backed AI start-up that is transforming commercial insurance. Their AI agents take on the complex, manual work that runs the world’s largest insurance brokers. They already work with three of the top 10 global brokers and have more demand than they can serve, so they’re growing the engineering team to 15 and hiring a Founding Engineer to work at the front line.
The role
As Founding Engineer, you’ll be a full-stack engineer who also talks to users. You’ll deploy AI agents on-site at some of the world’s largest insurance brokers, then bring what you learn back into the core platform. You’ll switch between client-facing deployment work and deep platform engineering, with real ownership over what gets built. This role suits an engineer from a top start-up who wants founder-level scope, enjoys working directly with customers and wants to help define a new category. It’s based five days a week in the client’s office in Vauxhall, London, with visa sponsorship and a £10K relocation bonus available.
What you’ll be doing
- Working on-site with clients: Spend time inside top global brokers. Run user interviews and learn their workflows alongside engineers and deployment strategists.
- Owning deployments end to end: Act as the single point of contact for a client deployment. Build agents, data models and UIs on the company’s agent harness, which is built for insurance.
- Growing accounts: Extend scoped contracts, build broader roadmaps and cross-sell across large broker organisations.
- Building the platform: Move between forward-deployed work and platform work, building the core features you found missing in the field.
- Making deployments scale: Find ways to make each deployment cheaper to deliver, for example by building agents over MCP so each one takes less engineering time.
What our client is looking for
Essential:
- 2+ years as a full-stack engineer, founding engineer or forward deployed engineer at a seed to Series D start-up
- Engineering experience at a high-growth start-up such as Revolut, Ramp, Harvey, Decagon, Palantir or PolyAI
- A track record of 0-to-1 ownership: deciding what to build, talking to customers and iterating, rather than just closing tickets
- A real desire to work directly with clients, plus the ability to do deep platform work
- Clear signs of exceptional ability and a drive to win wherever you’ve been
- A STEM degree from a top-50 international university
- Able to work five days a week from the office in Vauxhall, London
Desirable:
- Founder or founding engineer experience
- Familiarity with Python, AWS, SQL and React
Education
Skills
About Spectrum Search
Spectrum Search is the trusted talent partner in digital assets and AI — an executive search firm built by practitioners, not generalists. We partner with companies and investors on senior and executive hires across two industries we know from the inside. On one side: exchanges, OTC desks, custodians, market-makers and protocol foundations. On the other: AI labs, applied-AI businesses, and the frontier-compute teams powering them. Most search firms treat digital assets and AI as adjacent verticals to a generalist technology practice. The partners running those practices have rarely sat inside a market-making desk, a protocol foundation or a model lab. The cost is felt at the shortlist stage — where candidates get assessed on surface signals rather than on the technical and commercial judgement these roles actually require. Spectrum operates from inside the work. The specialist who takes the brief is the same person who runs the shortlist. Sector judgement is non-negotiable. Our networks are mapped at the level of named operators in named niches — not at the level of titles on a CV database. When a client engages us, the first conversation is about what good looks like in their specific corner of the market. The shortlist follows from there. Coverage is delivered through depth, not footprint. The firm is registered in the United Kingdom and the partners are based here. Our briefs are global — in any given quarter we are working across Europe, North America, the Gulf and Asia. If a senior or executive hire is on your roadmap, we'd welcome a quiet first conversation. Discreet by default. Reach us at info@spectrum-search.com, or call the London office on +44 203 468 6977. → spectrum-search.com