Senior Software Product Engineer

We are seeking a Senior Software Product Engineer to help shape both our software products and the way our engineering team delivers them. You will work across device-adjacent Rust and C++, product services and React/Tailwind user experiences. Alongside hands-on delivery, you will increasingly provide architecture direction, coordinate squad execution and support the growth of other engineers. We are open to strong engineers stepping into senior leadership: evidence of mentoring, technical ownership and sound judgement matters more than already having held every responsibility in the role.

Scope and autonomy

At this level, you are expected to take an ambiguous product problem, shape the technical approach, coordinate delivery across engineers and disciplines, and help others make good engineering decisions.

A step-up senior opportunity. You do not need to arrive as a fully formed engineering manager. We are looking for evidence of leadership potential and expect you to grow into broader people, architecture and squad responsibilities over your first six months.

What you will do

• Hands-on cross-stack delivery: Design and deliver important product capabilities across Rust, C++, APIs, and React/Tailwind applications.

• Architecture ownership: Define and communicate pragmatic designs across device control, product logic, data and user-facing layers; manage trade-offs and guide evolution of the stack.

• Squad leadership: Turn product goals into coherent technical plans, align work across disciplines, surface dependencies and risks, and help the squad deliver predictably.

• People development: Provide regular coaching, feedback and mentoring; grow into formal people-management responsibilities as the team develops.

• Production ownership: Set a strong example in testing, debugging, reviews, documentation, observability and CI/CD, and take responsibility for reliability beyond initial implementation.

• Physical product development: Stay close to our instruments in the lab, helping the squad diagnose system behaviour through logs, instrumentation and disciplined hands-on investigation as appropriate.

• Decision making: Lead technical discussions, invite challenge, document consequential decisions and balance near-term delivery with long-term maintainability.

• Cross-functional partnership: Work closely with product, R&D and hardware leaders to convert complex needs into robust product and platform capabilities.

What we are looking for

Required

• Substantial professional experience: A track record of shipping and supporting production software and taking ownership of technically significant work.

• Cross-stack credibility: Strong hands-on capability in either systems/device software such as Rust or C++, or modern web/application engineering such as React and TypeScript, with demonstrable experience and interest at the other end of the stack.

• Technical design: Experience designing software across components or services, explaining trade-offs and guiding implementation through reviews and collaboration.

• Emerging leadership: Evidence of mentoring, leading projects or workstreams, coordinating engineers, or acting as a technical point of contact. Existing line-management experience is welcome but not essential.

• Product and delivery judgement: Ability to frame ambiguous problems, sequence work, manage technical risk and balance quality with pragmatic delivery as requirements evolve through user feedback and physical experimentation.

• Communication and influence: Clear written and verbal communication, with the ability to align engineers and non-software stakeholders without relying on formal authority.

• Engineering judgement with AI: Practical experimentation with AI development tools, paired with strong independent engineering ability and clear methods for validation, security and accountability.

• Foundations: Strong software engineering fundamentals demonstrated through professional experience, education or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to have

• Frontend depth: Experience with React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS or desktop/web application development.

• Systems and devices: Experience with Rust, C++, embedded or device-adjacent software, SDKs or hardware integration.

• High-integrity systems: Experience or interest in reliability and traceability requirements, including 21 CFR Part 11, GLP, ISO 27001 or ISO 17025.

• Data and intelligence: Experience with SQL, computer vision, ML techniques, local data capture or cloud integration.

• Domain interest: Experience in acoustics, robotics, scientific instruments or life-sciences lab automation.

• People leadership: Previous line-management, mentoring, coaching or hiring experience.

• Architecture leadership: Experience evolving a multi-component product architecture or leading significant cross-cutting technical change.

What success looks like

In your first 6–12 months, we would expect you to:

• Cross-stack impact: Ship meaningful product functionality across more than one part of the software stack.

• System understanding: Build enough familiarity with the wider product to make sound cross-stack technical decisions.

• Architecture and practice: Lead a meaningful improvement to our software architecture, engineering practices or developer experience.

• Leadership growth: Take increasing ownership of squad technical direction and delivery, while coaching other engineers and developing towards formal people-management responsibility.

• Collaboration & engineering practice: Work effectively across disciplines, sharing knowledge and contributing to code reviews, testing, documentation and other practices that improve the quality and maintainability of our software.

Growing into technical and people leadership

This is a hands-on engineering role with increasing leadership responsibility. You may already have experience leading a small team, or you may be an experienced individual contributor ready to take that step. During your first 6-12 months, we expect you to grow into responsibility for:

• Technical direction: Provide clear technical direction for a small product squad.

• Planning and architecture: Translate product goals into an architectural approach and deliverable engineering work.

• Engineering support: Help engineers make good technical decisions through design discussion, pairing and code review.

• Coaching: Coach and support other engineers, developing towards formal people-management responsibility.

• Cross-functional clarity: Create alignment when work spans software, hardware, R&D and product.

How we think about AI-assisted development

We value engineers who actively explore how AI coding assistants, agents and AI-supported analysis can improve their effectiveness, and who can give examples of using them in real development work. You must remain capable of designing, implementing, debugging and reviewing software independently. You are expected to validate AI-generated output, recognise when these tools are inappropriate, and remain accountable for the security, reliability and maintainability of production code.

What we offer

• Hybrid working: Access to our central London lab with a flexible hybrid culture.

• Technical impact: Hands-on work with breakthrough technology where software directly controls physical matter.

• Breadth and growth: Room to deepen your craft while developing across product, systems and technical leadership.

• Innovation: A well-funded startup environment where you can contribute to patents and high-impact products.

Join us

If you are excited by the challenge of building reliable software across physical devices, product logic and user experiences, we would love to hear from you. Apply and help shape the product experience at AcoustoFab.