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Founding Backend Engineer at Highlo

Join a world-class founding team of former Cash App and Cleo executives at this $4M pre-seed AI startup in London. Backed by the former CTO of Stripe and top-tier VCs, this role offers a rare chance to architect the first breakout consumer shopping agent from the ground up. If you have 8+ years of backend experience and a hunger for 0-1 product building, you can claim up to 1% equity and shape the future of how the world shops.

Overview

Role overview

You will join a 5-person founding team led by former Cleo and Cash App executives to build a breakout consumer AI shopping agent. Architecting for the "AI era," you will move the product from beta to launch, creating private social networks and intelligent agents that reinvent how households make high-stakes purchases.

Company

Highlo

Highlo

$4M Pre-seed consumer AI startup backed by founders of Stripe and Cash App

Responsibilities

What you will do

  • Architect and scale cloud-native backend systems using .NET 8, Azure, and Redis to support real-time social shopping experiences.
  • Integrate cutting-edge AI services and LLM APIs to build agents that curate personalized stores and navigate complex product data.
  • Lead technical strategy and end-to-end delivery of 0-1 features, moving from customer insights to production-ready experiments daily.

Candidate profile

Who this is a fit for

  • 8+ years of experience building scalable backend services in OO languages like C#, Java, or Go with a mastery of system architecture.
  • Proven track record as a 0-1 builder who has shipped consumer-facing products from scratch and values automated testing and TDD.
  • Hands-on experience with generative AI tooling and a passion for using LLMs to create novel, joyful user interactions.

What makes it remarkable

Why this role is remarkable

  • Work directly with founders who grew startups to $500M valuations and #1 on the App Store, backed by top VCs who supported Revolut and Synthesia.
  • Significant ownership at ground zero with Index-benchmarked founding equity (up to ~1%) in a high-conviction, AI-first consumer play.
  • Rare opportunity to define a new product category using generative AI to solve decision fatigue and tab-overload in a multi-billion dollar market.

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