Startups

Founding Engineer (London)

Sparkles · London, England, GB / San Francisco, CA, US · On-site

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About Sparkles

Make everyone on your team an engineer. Backed by Y Combinator.

About the role

We're hiring a founding engineer who moves fast, cares about craft, and wants real ownership from day one. You'll build side by side with the founders, in person in London, from day one. You should already use AI tools by default — pushing Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and agent workflows hard, judging output critically, and moving faster without lowering the bar.

What they're looking for

  • Strong TypeScript and React skills
  • Roughly 1–5 years shipping real product software is a good baseline, but we'll flex for someone unusually strong
  • Ability to build full-stack product features with high autonomy
  • Strong product instincts and a bias toward outcomes
  • High agency: you notice problems, propose solutions, and drive things to completion
  • Clear communication and strong judgment
More about this role

with relocation to San Francisco

We're hiring a founding engineer who moves fast, cares about craft, and wants real ownership from day one. You'll build side by side with the founders, in person in London, from day one.

You should already use AI tools by default — pushing Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and agent workflows hard, judging output critically, and moving faster without lowering the bar.

  • Build and ship core product features end to end.

Talk to users constantly , find bottlenecks, and ship fixes fast.

  • Suggest new features, new products, and new internal tooling.
  • Help set the engineering bar , architecture, and pace of the company.
  • This is not a role where you can coast. It requires deep ownership, agency , and responsibility.
  • Strong TypeScript and React skills.
  • Roughly 1–5 years shipping real product software is a good baseline, but we'll flex for someone unusually strong.
  • Ability to build full-stack product features with high autonomy.
  • Strong product instincts and a bias toward outcomes.
  • High agency: you notice problems, propose solutions, and drive things to completion.

Good design taste. You can make sensible UI/product decisions, and Figma fluency is a...

Read the full posting on Sparkles's site ↗

Engineering

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