Lead Product Engineer

At Beam, you get to do work that matters for the world. We're solving the world's toughest social problems with an incredible team, tech and AI. And we're growing fast

It's not easy. Nothing worth doing ever is. But we take care of everyone who works here with everything from coaching to personal budgets and pay competitively.

You'll be joining a company that's having a huge positive impact with a high-performance culture where you can make an impact, enjoy your career, and rapidly progress.

We've already seen incredible growth from our Magic Notes product - that is helping case workers save over 8 hours a week of admin. Our usage has increased drastically over the last few months and we are now processing 10,000+ hours of audio from caseworkers a week.

About the role

We're looking for a Lead Software Engineer, reporting to the CTO, with a product-mindset and a passion for AI to lead one of our product teams to help build the future of Beam with the right technologies. It's a passionate and growing team (doubled in size in 2024) and values autonomy, empowerment and bias-to-action.

We want engineers who want to take responsibility for the product they are building and take part in every part of the product creation. As a Lead Engineer we are looking for someone who wants to grow in managing a team of engineers and lead the technical vision of the team. We're solving some hard problems that aren't just technical, and value people who want to solve them with us.

We have 2 distinct products at the moment - MagicNotes and Beamforce. One is already leveraging AI extensively - we are one of the first EU companies to be using OpenAI in their EU cluster - and the other we are looking to level up and bring into the future with AI to help our services team with their work.

What you'll be doing

• Leading a focussed team of 4-5 talented engineers to build out our AI offerings in MagicNotes - from process to mentoring to technical architecture

• Writing code - this is a hands on role and you'll spend around 60% of your time coding

• Help build our technology for the future - be it infrastructure or front-end. We value generalists.

• Work with product, design, commercial and analytics to figure out what new features to build within our product

• Building internal tools - for our team to help as many people as efficiently as possible.

• Using the latest generative AI tooling to empower our caseworkers to focus on what matters, helping those in need.

• Get deep into the power of the LLMs that exist and figure out ideal optimisations across our systems with them

Why is this exciting?

• You will have the flexibility to run the team as you see fit and bring in other great engineers from companies to build an amazing team

• Our MagicNotes product is already used by hundreds of case workers a day - you will have an opportunity to figure out the future of it or you'll be designing and defining the future of our BeamForce product

• AI is moving so unbelievably fast that you'll be constantly looking at opportunities to integrate more into our core offerings

• You will have a high degree of autonomy working with other exceptional and like minded engineers and product people

• You will see your features used by people who really need them - and see the amazing 5-star feedback we get in return for building these critical features

Who we're looking for

• You'll want to move into leadership or have experience leading a team and are keen to build a high-performance engineering culture

  • We are happy to consider people without explicit management experience

• Breadth of experience across infrastructure, backend and frontend technology stacks

  • We use the latest Ruby on Rails, Turbo, Phlex, AlpineJS, TailwindCSS, AWS, PostgresSQL to name a few technologies.

  • OpenAI & Claude for LLM interfacing

  • We are not wedded to them and will rapidly evolve over the next 3-6 months with the right technologies

• Has worked in complex software systems - both front-end and back-end and understands the importance of good data structures, a scalable architecture and constantly evolving tech stack

• You care about the "right tool for the right job" and pick the pragmatic options when building software

• Enjoys working in cross functional teams - PMs, UX, Designers and Data

• You have a product mindset: you care about customer outcomes and you want to make data-informed decisions

• You have an entrepreneurial, get-things-done attitude

• You'll contribute to fostering a culture of psychological safety, inclusivity, collaboration and continuous improvement within the team through participation in retrospectives and feedback

• You're passionate about social mobility

We have a strong preference for London-based engineers who can regularly meet the team to problem solve in person.

We're committed to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion through our work as an organisation, and that starts with the team we build. 53% of the people we support are from global majority backgrounds and 17% have disabilities. We believe we serve these people best when we're a diverse and inclusive team. To that end, we particularly welcome applications from global majority candidates and/or those who've experienced social disadvantage.

What we'll give back to you

• £125k-140k (dependent on experience - we'll have an open discussion)

• Generous EMI-qualifying share options.

• Access to therapy, coaching, classes & content - powered by Oliva .

• 1:1 workplace coaching with More Happi.

• Your own financial well-being coach, through Bippit.

• Generous Holiday - 25 days 3 additional days over the Christmas period + bank holidays.

• Work remotely up to 6 weeks a year.

• Eligible for 6 weeks sabbatical after 3 years in service.

• Nursey scheme through Gogeta.

• Healthcare cover through Benenden Health.

• Enhanced parental leave: Primary Caregiver leave 18 weeks and Secondary Caregiver leave 4 weeks.

• £200 WellBeam budget for activities enhancing wellbeing and professional development.

• Regular team talks from leading UK tech entrepreneurs.

• Annual membership to Shoreditch Exchange gym.

• Pension scheme where we contribute 3% of your salary and you contribute 5%.

• Free subscription to Calm meditation app.

• Discounted bike and accessories with Cyclescheme, and tech products with Techscheme.

We work hard to make sure every employee is given the freedom, tools, trust, and support to do the best work of their careers.

All our interviews are currently conducted over Google Meet. It usually takes us a week to get back to you after each round. Due to a high number of applications, we are unfortunately unable to offer feedback before Round 2. Feedback for subsequent rounds is provided if requested.

Application process

We take hiring seriously. We have a 4-stage process, giving you plenty of time to learn about Beam while we get to know you.

1. 30 mins with our Talent team

2. 45 minute Interview with David our CTO

3. 1.5 hour technical test with one of Beams senior engineers

4. 1 hour product and cultural interview with one of Beams product managers and a member of the engineering/design team

Good luck!