Wave Group
Founding Engineer

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Founding Engineer (Founding Engineer > Head of Engineering path)
Overview
At Wave Talent, we've partnered with a pre-seed fintech building the trust layer for agentic commerce, the missing piece that lets AI agents actually be trusted to make purchases on someone's behalf. They're hiring their first engineer to build the product end to end alongside the founders.
Technologies
- Python
- TypeScript
- LLM integrations
- ML pipelines
- Payment infrastructure
Responsibilities
- 2+ hires underneath this individual within 6-12 months
- Build a first-of-its-kind risk engine that quantifies whether an AI agent's purchase actually matches what the user wanted, combining traditional ML, LLM-as-judge and human-in-the-loop checks.
- Build the payment infrastructure layer that enables agent transactions, working directly with design partners to get it into production with real transaction data.
Compensation
- Salary: £120,000 - £140,000 per annum + significant equity.
Benefits
- Meaningful equity in a category-defining pre-seed business
- Direct access to the founding team
- Genuine ownership over technical direction from day one
Reasons to use Rodeo
I’m in my final year doing Economics and I don’t know whether to apply for grad schemes now or do a masters first. What do you think?
Honest answer — it depends on where you want to end up. A lot of top grad schemes (Big 4, civil service, banking) don’t need a masters. Let’s look at the ones you’d be competitive for now, and we can decide if a masters actually adds anything.
Also worth knowing: most autumn 2026 applications are open now. Timing matters more than you think.
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
Graduate Consultant — 2026 Scheme
Why you're a good match
StrongYour economics background and your summer at a regional bank line up with what PwC looks for on the consulting scheme. Applications close in four weeks.
See breakdownIt searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Why you're a good match
You’ve got the grades and the economics background, and your bank internship is exactly the experience this scheme looks for. Apply soon — deadlines close within the month.
Experience fit
Your summer at the bank plus your econometrics coursework map directly to the day-one responsibilities on this scheme — client modelling, market briefings, and deal support.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Industry/Type of Business
- Fintech, risk infrastructure for agentic commerce
Work Location
- 3 days a week in their Shoreditch, London office (currently Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, though not fixed)
Interview Process
- 3 stages: culture fit, a systems architecture discussion with a VC partner, and a take-home plus on-site working session.
Reporting To
- Founders
Company Size
- Founding team of 2 at present, hiring this role as the first engineer with plans to build out a small team underneath over time.
Why Now
- People are delegating far more to AI than they were even a year ago, and are getting comfortable letting it act on their behalf. The one thing still holding that back at scale is trust in autonomous purchases. Nobody has solved this yet, so there's a genuine window to define the category and become the default trust layer before anyone else does.


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Ideal Candidate
We'd love to chat with you about this position if:
- You've operated in a start-up or scale-up environment previously. The'silver bullet' experience will be someone who has a mixture of start-up and big-tech/scale-up experience.
- You're strong across system architecture and comfortable owning APIs, data pipelines and infrastructure decisions solo.
- You have depth in either ML infrastructure or shipping payment experiences, neither are essential, but either will make you stand out.
- Your stack is Python or TypeScript (their SDKs are Python-first), though candidates who are stronger in other languages will be considered - they're heavy AI users.
- You're commercially minded as well as technical, comfortable in a room with both a CEO and a CTO, and genuinely enjoy being hands-on rather than looking to move straight into management.
Contact
If this sounds like you, I'd love to chat 👋
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