Founding Engineer
Full-time | On-site | London, UK
CodeSpeak is a higher-level programming language based on plain English that will replace the likes of Python and TypeScript in production-grade software development. Imagine not having to spell out anything obvious and anything that’s been programmed a million times before. Imagine stepping up to the level of essential complexity only. This is CodeSpeak’s vision. It’s a bold goal, but we’ve done impossible things before, and we believe it can be done.
CodeSpeak vs Vibe Coding. Coding agents are single-player tools. They turn your messages into code and discard them, leaving your teammates to reconstruct the meaning from low-level detail. In CodeSpeak, the high-level spec is never lost. It’s the source of truth, and humans don’t have to read lower-level code. All the real engineering happens on the spec level: architecture, domain modelling, breaking hard problems into smaller chunks, introducing key abstractions and reusable idioms. All this is for humans to understand the system. LLMs will take care of coding behind the scenes.
Ideal candidates
- Smart, curious, self-driven engineers with a passion for making programming better.
- Have a solid understanding of CS/SE fundamentals.
- Have experience delivering production software: 3+ years (another position for under 3 years).
- Actively improve their workflows with AI-powered coding tools.
- If you have some recent interesting code to show us, it would be a plus
💡 We'd love to see more women apply. If you're on the fence, please do apply, and if you know someone brilliant (whether they are actively looking or not) please share!
28% of computing graduates in the UK are women. It's a lot of talent we don't want to miss out on.
Not required:
- Specific language/stack – we are all quick learners here.
- Degrees from top schools or working history at famous companies – we are hiring you, not your titles.
- Experience with language design or compilers – you are smart and curious, we’ll help you learn.
Current team and tasks
We’ve just started, so you’ll have maximum impact if you join now. We encourage initiative and team play. You’ll be working alongside experts in programming languages, AI, large-scale systems, CS, and mathematical logic. We love learning from each other and cracking hard problems together.
We are working in the startup mode, and there is some flexibility in the programming and engineering work we do. We are focused on delivering results that make users happy, and some examples of the tasks you will tackle are:
- Analyse specifications: detect ambiguities and contradictions, push back when users make mistakes.
- Make models generate good code: use existing agents, build our own, integrate static analysis techniques, etc.
- Design language features: modules, APIs, architectural patterns, etc. (where else can you do such things?!)
- Speed up the compiler: from clever prompting tricks to low-level optimisations.
- Apply cutting-edge research papers and tools in production.