Senior Software Engineer (C#.Net)

Senior Software Engineer - Consumer AI (Stealth Mode)

Remote

Up to £650 per day

.Net Core and Azure | Open to any strong OO language experience (Java, Kotlin, Go)

We're working with an early-stage, VC-backed startup building a new AI-first consumer product in the shopping space. The business is currently in stealth, but has already raised a significant pre-seed round from leading US and European investors, with backing from angels who have helped build some of the most successful consumer fintech and AI companies of the last decade.

The product is designed to help households make better purchasing decisions using AI, trusted recommendations from real people, and private social networks. They are starting with a highly emotional, high-spend consumer moment and are already supporting thousands of early users ahead of a wider launch.

This is a rare chance to join a 5-person founding team at ground zero, working directly with experienced founders who have previously built and scaled consumer products to major valuations and top app store positions.

The Role

They are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help build the backend foundations of a breakout consumer AI product. You'll be joining at a critical stage as the company moves from beta towards launch, so this role will suit someone who enjoys 0-1 product engineering, fast learning cycles, technical ownership and close exposure to real customers.

This is not a narrow delivery role. You'll be expected to shape features, challenge assumptions, work with customer data, use the product yourself, and help the team learn quickly what drives meaningful customer impact.

What You'll Be Doing

• Building scalable backend services for a consumer-facing AI product.
• Taking ownership of large, complex features from concept through to deployment.
• Making technical and architectural decisions in a fast-moving 0-1 environment.
• Working closely with the founders to shape experiments, product direction and learning cycles.
• Building new ways for individuals, households and trusted networks to interact with AI.
• Using customer insight and product data to guide what gets built next.
• Helping shape engineering culture, technical standards and ways of working from the earliest stage.

What They're Looking For

• Strong backend engineering experience, ideally with C# but other OO languages like, Java, Go or Kotlin would be fine.
• Experience building scalable services in a product-led environment.
• Hands-on experience with AI tools or AI-enabled product development.
• Strong Azure experience, ideally including Azure cloud services, Azure DevOps and Azure Container Apps.
• Good experience with SQL, Redis and modern backend architecture.
• Experience with CI/CD, Docker and automated testing.
• A DevOps mindset and comfort working across the full path from build to deploy.
• Previous experience in startups, 0-1 product work, personal projects or highly ambiguous product environments.
• A strong bias towards customer impact, learning fast and building things that solve real user problems.

Bonus Experience

• Infrastructure-as-code experience with Bicep or similar tools.
• Experience integrating AI services such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Semantic Kernel or similar.
• Knowledge of real-time communication protocols, ideally SignalR.
• Experience working on consumer products, marketplace products, social products or AI-native applications.

Why This Is Interesting

This is an opportunity to join a tiny, high-calibre team at the earliest stage of a very ambitious consumer AI product.

You'll be working directly with experienced founders, building in a space where there is no obvious playbook, and helping define both the product and the technical foundations from day one.

The culture is fast-paced, customer-obsessed and experimental. The team cares deeply about learning quickly, testing assumptions, using AI properly, and building something genuinely useful and joyful for consumers.

Burns Sheehan Ltd will consider applications based only on skills and ability and will not discriminate on any grounds.