Member of Technical Staff (Platform Leaning)

Tessl is a fast-growing Series A startup based in London, founded by Guy Podjarny, who previously founded Snyk. We’ve raised more than $100 million from world-class investors, including Index Ventures, Accel, GV and Boldstart. In 2025, Tessl ranked #2 in Sifted’s B2B SaaS Rising 100 and #20 in its AI 100.

We’re building the context layer for AI coding agents and a platform for AI-native software development. As an early member of the team, you’ll help shape how we build and scale a company operating at the forefront of AI and software development.

Overview of role

Join our engineering team to build real-time AI Native workflows, tooling, and interfaces that will reshape how developers create and maintain software.

This is a product engineering role with a platform twist. Most of your time, you'll do what every Tessl engineer does: design, prototype and ship product features end to end, collaborating closely with product, design and the wider engineering team in a fast-paced, high-autonomy environment. What makes you different is that when the work goes below the application layer, you light up rather than back away: complex networking scenarios such as site-to-site VPN and private connectivity, multi-cloud and multi-region deployments, observability, and the machinery that makes Tessl straightforward to deploy, operate and support wherever it needs to run.

We expect you to be relentlessly AI native about it: instead of triaging alerts at 2 am, you'll build or deploy the agent that does it. Instead of reacting to scaling bottlenecks, you'll create systems that spot them before they happen. Deep expertise is the foundation, because you can't automate what you don't know, but your ambition should be to make agents do the bulk of the operational work, with you supervising and steering.

We're open on level for this role, from mid-level to senior: trajectory and appetite matter more to us than years.

What success looks like: Within your first year, you're shipping product features end to end like any Tessl engineer. When infrastructure work arises, from deployment architecture to networking to observability, you're the one who takes it on and lands it well, with support where you need it. Our deployment and operational practices are stronger because of you, agentic tooling handles a growing share of the toil, and the infrastructure work you touch is compliant by default, keeping our ISO 27001 and SOC 2 journey unblocked.

What you'll do

No two days will be the same at Tessl! You'll have a high level of autonomy and be empowered to make decisions based on what you believe will help you deliver the most success. Here's an insight into just a few of the things you would be doing:

Product engineering (most of your time)

• Design and implement new functionality end to end, from initial design and prototypes to fully scoped production implementations, reviewed with the product team

• Rapidly prototype new capabilities to prove or disprove an idea, then develop a plan for a scalable implementation

• Pair with designers and other engineers to make the experience intuitive and slick, and integrate third-party services so we can focus our cycles on Tessl's core capabilities

• Gather requirements from customers and stakeholders, turn ambiguity into agreed plans, and deliver them

Platform & infrastructure

• Lean into infrastructure work as it arises: our AWS estate (EKS/Kubernetes), infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD with GitHub Actions, and our observability stack (Dash0/OpenTelemetry, Sentry, PostHog)

• Contribute to the architecture & build of our more complex networking and deployment scenarios, such as private connectivity and multi-region setups

• Improve developer experience and platform ergonomics so every engineer at Tessl ships faster

• Partner with our Infosec team so that everything you build is compliant by default, contributing infrastructure controls and evidence towards ISO 27001 and SOC 2

AI-native automation

• Build or deploy agentic tooling that picks up firing alerts and works through diagnostic steps autonomously, giving a human supervisor a detailed assessment with recommended actions

• Build agents that keep our estate healthy without human toil: dependency upgrades that test and merge themselves, alerts that arrive pre-diagnosed, runbooks that execute instead of sitting in a wiki

• Continuously spot repetitive manual work, across product, platform and on-call workflows, and convert it into agent-driven automation

What we're looking for

We're looking for someone who is as excited as we are to be part of a dynamic team that is shaping the future of AI and software development. We're committed to building a diverse team and strongly encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences.

Must-haves

• Proven experience as a Software Engineer (TypeScript/Node preferred): you care about code modularity, structure and aesthetics, and you're equally comfortable contributing to a mature codebase with strict CI criteria or hacking up a quick prototype to prove an assumption

• A genuine pull towards platform and infrastructure work, backed by hands-on experience: you've deployed and operated real systems (Kubernetes, cloud environments, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD), and when the chance came to go deeper, you took it, whether that was owning platform or DevOps work in a previous role or picking up the infrastructure tasks nobody else wanted

• Solid systems and networking fundamentals: DNS, TLS, VPCs, firewalls; you can reason and debug below the application layer with confidence

• Demonstrated use of AI coding tools and agents to accelerate your own work, and excitement about experimenting with new AI approaches to transform how engineering is done

• Comfortable with fast-paced, high-autonomy environments: you turn loose requirements into plans and shipped work without waiting to be told

Nice-to-haves

• You self-host things for fun: a homelab, your own services, a Kubernetes cluster nobody asked you to run

• Production AWS/EKS experience, or hands-on work with private connectivity, VPNs, or multi-region architectures

• Experience producing infrastructure evidence for certifications such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2

• You've thrived in an early-stage startup before

• Have a cool project to show us (GitHub links welcome!)

The kind of person you are

• You're a product engineer first: you measure infrastructure by what it lets the team ship, and you see platform work as making every engineer faster, never a domain to guard

• You're calm under pressure, including when production is misbehaving and the answer is three layers down the stack

• You think big about how AI changes the job: the best engineers automate themselves out of the repetitive loop and operate at the scale of a team

• You're comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change, and you grab a shovel when something needs doing outside your lane

• You communicate clearly and bring people along: product, security, engineers and customers all need to trust your judgement

Salary and benefits

Office: Our brand new 10,000 sq. ft office is in the AI hub of Kings Cross, London. We have generous catering and have regular social events such as team lunches, drinks and more. We require all staff to be in our London HQ at least 3 days a week on our anchor days of Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Salary: We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience and skills and employee share options, benchmarked against industry standards.

Benefits: 25 days holiday, health insurance, including dental and vision, which extends to partners and dependents, as well as a company-matched pension. We also provide a commuting stipend for those who live outside London, and a cycle to work scheme.

Application Process

Here's an outline of what you can expect during our interview process:

1. Introductory Call with one of our engineering leaders. A relaxed chat to learn about your background, interests, and career goals. We'll also share more about the role, Tessl's vision, and answer any questions you have.

2. Take-Home Exercise. You'll receive a practical challenge based on real scenarios you might tackle at Tessl: an opportunity to showcase your approach to problem-solving on your own schedule.

3. On-site Technical Session. You'll pair with two of our lead engineers to build on your take-home exercise. This session simulates working together on real problems and allows us to explore your technical expertise more deeply.

4. Culture Conversation with our People Lead. A two-way dialogue about our values, team dynamic, and your motivations. Feel free to ask about life at Tessl, growth opportunities, or anything else you're curious about.

5. Leadership Discussion with Maurilio (Head of Engineering), and potentially also with Guy (CEO) or Dru (Head of Product). Our final stage focuses on strategic alignment and long-term vision. You'll learn more about Tessl's roadmap and how you could contribute to our mission.

Throughout the process, if you have any specific requirements or need adjustments, please let us know: we're happy to accommodate.

We care deeply about the warm, inclusive environment we’re building at Tessl and we value diversity – we welcome applications from those typically underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this role but are not totally sure whether you’re the right person, do apply anyway!

Learn how we think and work

• On Tessl, The AI Native Development Startup

• Announcing skills on Tessl: the package manager for agent skills

• Podcast Episode: The End of Fragmented Agent Context, Guy Podjarny Tessl CEO