Founding Engineer - sole IC

Location: London, Office-based/Hybrid 
Salary: to £160k + 20% bonus + meaningful equity

This is a true greenfield build. The Founding Engineer will be the first technical hire and sole architect building an infrastructure layer for automated vehicle payments, where vehicles seamlessly pay for tolls, parking, and charging without any driver interaction.

The technology – which YOU will build – automatically detects when a vehicle enters a chargeable location and handles payment in the background using vehicle telematics and mobility APIs.

You’ll work directly with an experienced founder to build and scale the platform. A technically hands-on yet entrepreneurial role, you’ll help design the architecture, build integrations with telematics providers and payment systems, create their geospatial decision engine, and lay the foundation for a world-class engineering organization.

This is a role for someone who enjoys building from first principles, moving quickly, and taking ownership of major technical decisions.

What You’ll Work On:

• Design and build the core platform
• Integrate with vehicle telematics providers and OEM APIs
• Build geospatial systems that determine when vehicles enter and exit chargeable zones
• Develop payment orchestration and billing infrastructure
• Build fleet management and operational tooling
• Create scalable backend services and APIs
• Work directly with parking, tolling, and mobility partners
• Establish engineering standards and technical culture
• Help recruit and lead future engineering hires

Required Expertise:

• Building production backend systems using Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, or similar languages
• Designing and operating REST APIs and distributed systems
• Cloud infrastructure and deployment on AWS
• PostgreSQL and data-intensive applications
• Docker, CI/CD, monitoring, and observability
• Third-party API integrations
• Security and reliability best practices

We’re less concerned with specific credentials and more interested in exceptional builders.

Nice-to-Haves, Experience of:

• Payments and fintech infrastructure
• Geospatial systems, mapping, or geofencing
• Fleet management, telematics, or connected vehicles
• Mobility, transportation, or automotive technology

What We’re Looking For:

• Strong product instincts
• Ability to move quickly with limited resources
• Comfortable making decisions with imperfect information
• Excellent communication skills
• Ownership mentality
• Excited by early-stage startup environments
• Interest in eventually leading an engineering team

The successful applicant will be one of the first employees; you’ll have significant ownership and influence over the product and company; the opportunity to build a category-defining mobility infrastructure platform; have direct access to customers and strategic partners; meaningful equity upside; work alongside a founder who has previously built and exited a company in the mobility space.

If you’re excited about solving real-world problems at the intersection of mobility, payments, and software infrastructure, we’d love to hear from you.