Senior Full Stack Engineer (contract)

We’re building the future of qualitative research.

We’ve already secured 6-figure pilot deals from Fortune 500 companies and supported by a leading US Qualitative Research company and an AI venture builder.

Modern teams move fast, but deep human insight is still slow, expensive, and locked behind heavyweight research cycles. As a result, most everyday decisions such as creative iteration, messaging, positioning are made with guesswork rather than real understanding.

Traditional focus groups can’t keep up.

Focus eliminates this bottleneck by making qualitative insight instant, always-on, and scalable, without losing the depth that makes it valuable.

We’re building an AI-native research platform to become the default qualitative research layer for modern organisations.

The Role

We’re hiring our a contracted engineer (initially 3 months): a senior, product-minded full stack engineer who can take ownership of a real existing prototype and help turn early traction into an enterprise-ready platform.

You’ll be picking up an alpha product and owning its evolution working closely with our Product Lead, with ongoing support from an experienced engineering team behind the scenes.

This is a hands-on role with real influence. For the right person, it can grow into a technical leadership/Founding Engineer track position as the company grows.

You’ll:

• Own and evolve the backend systems that power Focus, making the product robust, modular, and enterprise-ready
• Build and ship features end-to-end, from product requirements through to production
• Work closely with product lead to translate real research workflows into software
• Implement and maintain LLM-powered, agentic systems as an applied layer within the product
• Make architectural decisions and help set technical standards early
• Move fast, iterate in production, and improve the product based on real usage
• Help shape the foundations of Focus’s engineering frameworks/culture

Who You Are

• A senior full stack engineer with 6-8 years of experience shipping real products
• You’ve built and launched software before.
• You’re comfortable working in ambiguity and don’t need everything fully defined to make progress
• You’re product-minded and care deeply about how users experience what you build
• You take ownership, push through complexity, and go beyond your immediate remit when needed
• You’re excited by the potential of AI, especially digital twins and applied LLM systems and want to build them responsibly

Bonus if you:

• Have experience working with LLMs, agentic systems, or AI eval frameworks (Langfuse).
• Have experience running containerized applications on Google Cloud Platform + provisioning with terraform.
• Have operated in early-stage startups or venture-backed environments
• Are interested in the intersection of technology, research, and human behaviour
• See yourself growing into technical leadership over time

Current Stack

Frontend: React, TypeScript, Shadcn/Tailwind

Backend: Mix of TypeScript - Supabase (DB, Edge functions) and FastAPI

The Team

Focus is led by founders who have built, scaled, and exited companies before, combining deep expertise in market research with proven AI and product execution.

We operate as a high-performance, small team between London and Los Angeles, with strong product and research roots. You’ll be working closely with people who care deeply about quality, speed, and doing things properly.

How We Work

• London preferred but can be remote (ideally EU)
• Close collaboration with product and customers - minimal layers, high trust
• Real ownership
• We move fast

Interview Process

We aim to keep this thoughtful and efficient:

1. Intro conversation (20-30 mins) - background, motivation, and fit
2. Technical & product deep dive (test)
3. Practical discussion or exercise focused on real Focus problems (30)
4. Offer