Lead Engineer
hace 13 horas
City of London
A bit about us. We're building Cotta, a gourmet food market that connects people with the best independent producers, home chefs, and artisan makers. Think of it as bringing the quality and curation of a high-end food hall to your phone. This role is different. Here's why. This isn't a traditional software engineering role, and we want to be upfront about that from the start. This is an AI-native engineering team. That means our Product Engineer doesn't spend their day writing code line by line. They spend it thinking: assessing AI-generated plans before execution, steering the agent that builds the code, reviewing outputs for architectural soundness, and shaping product direction alongside the founding team. The ratio is roughly 80% judgment work, 20% hands-on intervention. One great Product Engineer working this way delivers at the velocity of a much larger traditional team. That's the model, and it works, but only with the right person running it. If you're an engineer who has already adopted AI coding tools, formed strong opinions about what works and what doesn't, and you're frustrated that most roles don't give you enough time to actually think, this might be exactly what you've been looking for. What you'll be doing. • Owning the AI agent engineering chain: assessing plans before execution, monitoring outputs, catching architectural drift, and ensuring what ships is genuinely production-quality, not just technically passing, • Acting as the architectural conscience of the platform, maintaining oversight as the codebase grows and ensuring every new feature aligns with the overall system design, • Working directly with the founding leadership team and our Fractional CTO to translate product decisions into technical direction, contributing to what we build and in what order., • Critically, you'll be the bridge between the technical and the non-technical: turning complex engineering realities into clear, honest, jargon-free conversations so the leadership team can make confident decisions, • Taking ownership of the platform transition from our current agency build to fully in-house capability, including infrastructure, secrets, CI/CD, and codebase health, • Building and curating the context layer (architecture docs, coding standards, domain rules) that makes our AI tooling smarter and more effective over time What we're looking for. • Mid-to-senior software engineer with strong architectural thinking and the ability to hold a full system in your head while reviewing individual outputs, • Already working with AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or similar) and able to articulate clearly what works, what doesn't, and why, • A natural skeptic: you question outputs rather than accepting them, and you know the difference between code that works and code that's right, • Strong grasp of our tech stack: Node.js, React/React Native, Next.js, MongoDB, and experience with third-party integrations, • Comfortable working in a lean, fast-moving startup environment where you'll contribute to product decisions, not just execute tickets, • An exceptional communicator with non-technical stakeholders: you don't just translate trade-offs, you take the time to understand the business need behind a request before you respond to it. The leadership team shouldn't need to understand the technology to trust your recommendations - that's on you to make happen, • Experience with DevOps, CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure, • Genuine curiosity about the business: you ask "why are we building this?" and "what problem does this actually solve?" before jumping to the how. At Cotta, the best technical decisions start with understanding the commercial and customer context, not the codebase, • Bonus: previous experience as a founding or early-stage engineer at a startup, or exposure to marketplace or food-tech products What we offer. • The chance to be Cotta's first engineering hire, with real ownership of the technical direction from day one, • A close working relationship with an experienced Fractional CTO who'll be a genuine thinking partner, not just a line manager, • Direct influence over what we build and how: your voice matters in product conversations, not just technical ones, • A passionate, high-standards founding team that genuinely cares about quality at every level, • Competitive salary, • Hybrid working, with a strong in-office culture in London