Founding Engineer

Exolabs; City of London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A tech startup in London is seeking a Founding Engineer to contribute to the development of an AI stack designed for consumer hardware. Candidates should possess strong problem-solving skills, be product-focused, and thrive in fast-paced environments. The role emphasizes learning and adaptation while working with a diverse tech stack, including Python, Rust, and C++. Competitive equity and benefits are offered.

Benefits

Generous equity

Private health insurance

Fully kitted-out Mac Studio / MacBook Pro

Dinner + Ubers when working late

Qualifications

• Strong problem-solving skills are essential.
• Focus on user impact as well as technical details.
• Desire to work on meaningful projects that challenge you.

Responsibilities

• Help build AI that runs on consumer hardware.
• Network heterogeneous devices effectively.
• Maximise throughput and reliability in a distributed environment.

Skills

Strong problem-solving ability

Product-focused

Ambitious

Fast-moving

High-agency

Tools

Python

Rust

C++

Job description

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WHAT WE’RE BUILDING

We are building an AI stack from the ground up, optimised for consumer hardware — from the models to the distributed algorithms, scheduling, and orchestration.

• Discovering and networking heterogeneous devices.
• Sharding and parallelising AI workloads across them.
• Scheduling to maximise throughput and latency on mixed hardware.
• Delivering reliability and performance on par with the cloud — without giving up sovereignty or privacy.

On consumer hardware, we face higher memory‑to‑FLOPS ratios, unreliable connections as devices go offline and move networks, and higher network bandwidth‑to‑FLOPS ratios than datacenter GPUs.

WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR

We’re hiring a Founding Engineer to help us make EXO the default way AI runs. You might be a fit if:

• Strong problem‑solving ability— we care about aptitude and reasoning, not years of experience.
• Product‑focused— you think about the user impact as well as the technical details.
• Ambitious— you want to work on something that matters and will push you to your limits.
• Fast‑moving— you prefer momentum over perfection and thrive in rapid iteration.
• High‑agency— you take ownership, drive solutions, and work independently.

HOW WE WORK

We’re in‑person in London. The culture is intense, collaborative and there is constant learning.

TECH STACK

• Python — core orchestration + ML
• Rust — networking, exposed to Python via FFI
• C++ — Apple MLX core

You don’t need to know all of these upfront. The ability to learn quickly and reason from first principles matters more.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Generous equity — meaningful ownership that reflects your impact
• Private health insurance
• Fully kitted‑out Mac Studio / MacBook Pro
• Dinner + Ubers when working late

HOW TO APPLY

Apply here https://team.exolabs.net/founding-engineer/