About Polaron

Polaron is a spin-out from Imperial College London, founded by Isaac Squires, Dr. Steve Kench, and Dr. Sam Cooper. The founders were united by their desire to harness engineering, artificial intelligence, and materials science to build the materials of the future.

Our mission is to become the world leaders at the interface between AI and materials. Through relentless dedication to innovation and pragmatism, we aim to support the next generation of advanced materials critical to building a more sustainable future.

Role Overview

You’ll be joining a team of four (CEO, CTO, Chief Scientist and Head of Engineering) as the first software engineer. This role grants you a significant degree of autonomy, and influence over the development and direction of the platform and product.

We’re building a SaaS product that will allow materials engineers to leverage cutting-edge AI in their work. Some of the things on our roadmap you’ll work on include:

• Building a robust cloud platform for scheduling the training and serving of bespoke AI models for our customers.
• A rich web-based image manipulation application for pre-processing image data that is used to train machine learning models.

Location

This is primarily an in-person role, with the team currently working from our East London office (a short walk from Old Street and Hoxton Overground) at least four days a week. At this early stage of the company’s development we currently favour collaboration in person, but we can discuss your preferences for working location as part of an application.

Our Commitment to Diversity

At Polaron, we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive team. We encourage you to apply, regardless of your past experience or background.

Technologies We Use

• Frontend/Backend: TypeScript with React/Next.js and Express/Prisma.
• Machine Learning: Python.
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform (AWS).
• Database: PostgreSQL.
• CI/CD: Github, Github Actions.

Interview Process

Our interview process typically consists of the following stages:

1. Initial Video Call (20 mins): Discuss your experience and interest in the role with a member of the team.
2. Technical Pairing Exercise (1 hr): Collaborative coding session via video call, This is a chance to see how we work on an engineering problem together.
3. Behavioral Interview (45 mins):  In-person discussion with two team members in our office.
4. Paid Trial Day: This is a chance to spend the day in our office collaborating with the team on a real engineering task.

For any inquiries or requests for reasonable adjustments during the application process, please contact us at .

Requirements

You should apply if

• You have 5+ years experience working as a product-focussed software engineer.
• Experience writing well-tested, maintainable code with a statically typed programming language (TypeScript, Go, Java/Scala, etc).
• A product-oriented mindset, comfortable engaging with customers, defining products, and owning feature delivery from start to finish.
• Comfortable working across the technology stack.

Benefits

The salary range for this position is £75,000-£90,000 GBP, and 0.1-0.5% equity, depending on experience and negotiated terms.