Founding Engineer, Marketplace (London)

Department: Engineering

Reports to: Max (Head of Marketplace)

Location: London (Hybrid — The Church, 291 Hackney Road)

Type: Full-time | Equity + Salary

About Wonder Studios

Wonder Studios is an AI-native film and content studio redefining how stories are told. We partner with global brands, artists, and studios to create world-class campaigns, films, and experiences that merge cinematic craft with cutting-edge AI technology.

Backed by leading global investors, Wonder recently closed a $12M seed round to accelerate its next phase of growth — expanding our team and building the future of storytelling.

Our work spans entertainment, advertising, and original content (IP) — collaborating with partners such as YouTube, Google DeepMind, Universal Music Group, Campfire Studios and leading global artists.

Learn more at wonderstudios.com.

The Role

We're building the infrastructure that connects creators with fans, tech companies with talent, and filmmakers with the resources they need to make extraordinary work.

Wonder's Marketplace is the engine behind all of it — a platform that blends the discovery model of Apple TV with the creator economy of Patreon, built specifically for the AI creative industry. We're not just building a community. We're building the place where the next generation of filmmakers gets found, supported, and paid.

Right now our Marketplace has 2,000+ members, real enterprise clients, and Wonder TV — a curated streaming platform — live inside the app. We're at the inflection point between Circle-hosted MVP and fully custom platform, and we need a founding engineer to help us get there.

This is a 0-to-1 role. You'll work alongside Rick (Founding Engineer), Max (Head of Marketplace), and JD (Product & Ops) to own meaningful product surface areas from day one — not tickets in a backlog, but real decisions that shape how creators earn and how talent gets discovered.

What You'll Build

Wonder TV — Stage 2 and beyond

We're live on Circle (Stage 1). Stage 2 is a custom NextJS frontend reading from Circle's backend — a proper VOD experience with discovery, watch pages, and creator profiles. Stage 3 takes us off Circle entirely. You'll be instrumental in both.

Jobs Board

A talent marketplace connecting Wonder's creator community with brands, studios, and agencies looking for AI-native creative talent. A standalone product to design, build, and launch.

Creator Profiles & Roster

Public-facing profiles connected to Wonder MGMT — portfolio hosting, enquiry flows, social proof, and direct client booking. The infrastructure that makes Wonder a talent platform, not just a community.

Fan Film Finance

The long-term vision: fans co-financing films directly alongside the creators they follow — micro-contributions, tokenised film rights, or Patreon-style subscriptions tied to production milestones. Frontier territory. We want someone who finds it exciting.

Marketplace Infrastructure

Search, discovery, matching, payments, notifications, permissions, moderation — the fundamentals that make a marketplace work at scale.

The Stack

• Frontend: NextJS, React, Tailwind
• Backend: Node.js / TypeScript, REST + GraphQL
• Database: PostgreSQL (as we move off Circle)
• Infrastructure: Vercel, Cloudflare, Circle.so (for now)
• Auth: Auth0
• Payments: Stripe
• AI: Fluency with AI tooling is essential — you'll be building on top of it, not alongside it

What Success Looks Like

This role is about moving numbers that matter:

• 2k → 10k MAU — Every product decision you make either accelerates or slows this. You'll own the surfaces that drive it.
• $1M+ ARR from the Marketplace — Through Wonder TV subscriptions, Jobs Board fees, and Wonder MGMT commission. You'll build all three revenue streams.
• Wonder TV as the Patreon of the AI creative industry — Subscriptions, revenue sharing, direct fan contributions, and film financing. The engineer who builds this well isn't shipping features — they're defining a new category.
• Revenue per headcount — Wonder's North Star. Build infrastructure that makes the platform more self-sustaining and the team more productive.

Who We're Looking For

Background

• 5+ years of full-stack engineering experience
• Has built and shipped a marketplace, creator platform, or community platform — ideally as an early or founding engineer
• Comfortable owning a feature from database schema to UI
• Strong product opinions, not just engineering opinions — you care about what you're building and why
• AI-fluent: you use AI tools daily and are opinionated about where they help and where they don't
• London-based — we're in the Church (291 Hackney Road) and the energy matters

The Person

• Bias to action — ships fast, iterates, doesn't wait for perfect
• High ownership — treats the product like it's theirs
• Commercially curious — understands that great engineering serves a business outcome
• Collaborative — works well with product, design, and non-technical stakeholders
• Excited by the intersection of culture, creativity, and technology — this isn't a fintech gig

Nice to Have

• Experience with tokenisation, web3 infrastructure, or fan finance mechanisms
• Experience building video or streaming products
• Experience with Circle.so or similar community platforms
• Background in creative industries — media, music, entertainment, or gaming

Compensation

Competitive London market rate + meaningful founding engineer equity.

Why Join Wonder

You'll join a small, ambitious team at the frontier of storytelling and technology — working alongside world-class creators, technologists, and storytellers who are building what comes next.

The Marketplace you'll build will connect creators with fans, tech companies with world-class talent, and filmmakers with the tools and finance they need to make extraordinary work. It's Patreon meets Apple TV, built for the AI creative era — and you'll be the engineer who makes it real.

You'll have direct access to leadership, real ownership from day one, and a community of 2,000+ AI-native creators as your users.

At Wonder, we're shaping the future of entertainment. We'd love for you to help build it.

About the Role

As a hands-on Engineering Manager of one of our feature teams at Ledgy, you'll lead the engineers who build the features that help companies offer, manage, and communicate compensation and savings vehicles: from equity plans to pensions, carry, and beyond. Your team works on the products employees and companies use to make sense of complex compensation structures.

This is a good fit if you find it meaningful to work on features that are financially significant to the people using them, as getting compensation right matters. The work is domain-rich: these structures are complex, high-stakes, and varied. You'll report to the Head of Engineering and play a key role in expanding Ledgy's product coverage as companies increasingly look to offer diverse forms of compensation.

You'll Thrive in This Role If You

• Have 2+ years in Engineering Management and 6+ years as a Software Engineer, with meaningful time in product-focused or domain-heavy roles
• Are energised by features that have a direct, visible impact on end users — the things employees actually see and interact with
• Care deeply about correctness in domains where getting things wrong has real financial consequences
• Are comfortable with evolving scope — compensation takes many forms, and the product will grow to reflect that
• Actively use AI tools to multiply your output and are excited to help your team do the same — you see AI as a core part of how great engineering gets done today
• Love developing people and creating an environment where engineers can do their best work
• Want to stay hands-on — you're comfortable diving into the codebase, reviewing PRs with concrete feedback, and shipping yourself

What You'll Own

• Team Leadership: Setting technical direction for the team, running 1:1s and performance conversations, and supporting engineers in their growth.
• AI-Augmented Engineering: Modelling and promoting effective use of AI tools across your team — from coding assistants to automated workflows. You'll help engineers develop good instincts for where AI accelerates work and where human judgment matters most.
• Compensation & Savings Features: The product surface covering a range of compensation and savings vehicles — equity plans, pensions, carry, and more. Your team builds the logic and UX that makes these products usable for both companies and their employees.
• Employee-Facing Experience: Ensuring the features your team builds are not just correct, but clear and accessible to employees navigating complex compensation structures.
• Domain Breadth: As Ledgy expands into new compensation types, your team will be at the frontier, building the models and product experiences that bring them to life.

Our tech stack:

• Language: TypeScript
• Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS, tRPC
• Backend: tRPC, Node.js, MongoDB, Temporal
• Infrastructure: Docker, GitHub Actions, GCP, Terraform Cloud, Kubernetes

What Your Journey Could Look Like

First 30 Days

• Build relationships with your direct reports and develop a solid understanding of the compensation domain, including what we support today and where we're headed
• Get hands-on with the codebase — review PRs and understand how the product models compensation and plan logic
• Meet PD leadership: CTO, Head of Engineering, Head of Product, and the other EMs
• Understand how your team's domain intersects with the rest of the platform

First 3 Months

• Own the team's delivery rhythm: roadmap reviews, sprint health, and unblocking engineers
• Identify and begin addressing the most complex or fragile areas of the domain
• Establish regular 1:1s and begin meaningful coaching conversations with your reports
• Partner with PM and Design on the roadmap for expanding compensation coverage

6–12 Months

• Be recognised as the technical leader for compensation and savings features at Ledgy
• Deliver measurable improvements to product quality, coverage, or the employee experience
• Lead performance reviews and meaningful career development conversations
• Be a trusted partner to product and engineering leadership on compensation strategy

The Interview Process

1. Getting to know you (30 min): Meet with someone from our people team to talk about your experience and to answer questions about the role
2. Live Coding (60 min): A problem-solving session (without AI) using your preferred language and IDE
3. System Design (60 min): Walk us through an architecture you've significantly contributed to — we'll explore domain modelling and product complexity based on your experience
4. Mock 1:1 (45 min): A mock coaching conversation with one of our engineers to see how you approach people management and development
5. Culture & Vision (30 min): Meet one of our founders to discuss Ledgy's mission and how you think about making compensation and savings products work for everyone
6. Offer 🎉

Being part of Ledgy means:

• Recharge and re-energize with flexible working hours, 25 days of vacation, and up to 40 days of remote work from outside your home country.
• We make space for your own professional development, with a generous yearly learning & development budget.
• This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. All salaries are aligned with competitively benchmarked ranges based on work location and levelling.
• For candidates based in London or Zurich we use a hybrid work model of 2 days in the office per week.

About the Role

As a hands-on Engineering Manager of our agent and developer platform at Ledgy, you'll lead the team that makes everything else possible, the infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, developer and agent tooling, security posture, and platform capabilities that thousands of employees worldwide depend on to experience equity ownership. You'll lead a team of 4–6 engineers building the foundation for Ledgy's next chapter: a platform where AI agents operate as first-class citizens alongside human engineers.

This is a good fit if you see DevOps, CI/CD, and platform engineering not as plumbing, but as one of highest-leverage investment a company can make - especially as AI agents become core contributors to how software is built and delivered. You'll also partner closely with our CISO to shape Ledgy's security strategy, particularly as AI transforms the threat landscape and our enterprise customers demand rigorous security practices. You'll report directly to the Head of Engineering and play a key role in scaling our platform and our engineering culture.

You'll Thrive in This Role If You

• Have a strong vision for what modern platform engineering looks like when AI agents are writing, testing, and deploying code alongside humans
• Bring deep experience in CI/CD, DevOps, and infrastructure - and opinions about how to make pipelines fast, reliable, and agent-friendly
• Are excited about building systems that scale: observability, deployment automation, developer experience, and infrastructure-as-code
• Have a security-minded approach to platform engineering - you understand that when AI agents have access to production systems and sensitive financial data, the security model needs to evolve, and you're eager to help define what that looks like
• Love developing people, watching engineers grow and tackle increasingly sophisticated challenges
• Want to remain hands-on - you're comfortable building with Terraform, debugging pipelines, and shipping improvements yourself, and you actively use AI tools to multiply your output
• Have 3+ years experience in Engineering Management and 6+ years as a Software Engineer, with meaningful time spent in platform, infrastructure, or DevOps roles

What You'll Own

• Team Leadership: Leading a team of platform engineers, setting technical direction, and creating an environment where people do the best work of their careers.
• CI/CD & Developer Experience: Our build and deployment pipelines - making them fast, reliable, and optimised for both human and AI-agent workflows. Think: how do we make it seamless for an agent to open a PR, get it reviewed, and ship it?
• Infrastructure & Observability: Our GCP infrastructure, Terraform configuration, monitoring, and alerting. You'll set SLOs and make sure we can see what's happening in production - including what agents are doing.
• Security Partnership: Working alongside our CISO to define and execute Ledgy's security strategy. This means helping prioritise what matters most for a regulated fintech serving enterprise clients - from supply chain security and access controls to the new challenges introduced by AI agents operating in production systems. You'll be the engineering leader who turns security strategy into implemented reality.
• AI Infrastructure & Agent Platform: Building the foundations that let both humans and AI agents operate effectively in Ledgy's systems. This includes an MCP interface that exposes our platform to AI tools, agent identity and access models (distinguishing human from agent actions in audit logs and permissions), dry-run and sandbox environments for safe experimentation.

Our tech stack:

We have a modern, cohesive stack that lets us move fast while maintaining quality:

• Language: TypeScript
• Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS, tRPC
• Backend: tRPC, Node.js, MongoDB, Temporal
• Infrastructure: GCP, Terraform Cloud, Kubernetes, Docker, Github Actions

What Your Journey Could Look Like

First 30 Days

• Build meaningful relationships with your direct reports and understand their career aspirations
• Get hands-on with our CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure, and deployment processes - identify the biggest friction points
• Understand how AI agents are already being used in our engineering workflows (Cursor, Claude Code, automated PRs) and where the gaps are
• Join the engineering leadership team and understand how we translate product vision into technical reality
• Meet with our CISO and understand Ledgy's current security posture, compliance requirements, and where the biggest gaps are

First 3 Months

• Own and drive improvements to pipeline reliability and speed - set measurable SLOs for build times, deployment frequency, and failure rates
• Define and begin executing a roadmap for making our platform agent-ready: what needs to change so that AI agents can contribute code safely and at scale?
• Have regular 1:1s with your reports and support them in their growth
• Shape platform strategy alongside the Head of Engineering and CTO
• Partner with the CISO to define a security roadmap that accounts for AI-specific risks - agent access controls, code provenance, data exposure through AI tooling - and begin executing on the highest-priority items

6–12 Months

• Be recognised as the technical leader who defines how Ledgy's platform scales - for both humans and agents
• Have delivered measurable improvements to developer experience, deployment velocity, and infrastructure reliability
• Lead meaningful career development conversations and conduct performance reviews
• Own engineering initiatives that influence how the entire organisation ships software
• Be a trusted partner to product and engineering leadership on technical direction

The Interview Process

1. Getting to know you (30 min): meet with someone from our people team to talk about your experience and to answer questions about the role
2. Live Coding (60 min): A problem-solving session using your preferred language and IDE
3. System Design (60 min): Walk us through an architecture you've significantly contributed to — we'll explore CI/CD, infrastructure, and scaling aspects based on your experience
4. Mock 1:1 (45 min): A mock coaching conversation with one of our engineers to see how you approach people management and development
5. Culture & Vision (30 min): Meet one of our founders to discuss Ledgy's mission and how you think about building platforms that scale
6. Offer 🎉

Being part of Ledgy means:

• Recharge and re-energize with flexible working hours, 25 days of vacation, and up to 40 days of remote work from outside your home country.
• We make space for your own professional development, with a generous yearly learning & development budget.
• This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. All salaries are aligned with competitively benchmarked ranges based on work location and levelling.
• For candidates based in London or Zurich we use a hybrid work model of 2 days in the office per week.

About the Role

As a Senior/Staff Software Engineer at Ledgy, you’ll design and build elegant, scalable systems that power how companies manage their equity. You’ll collaborate with fellow engineers (based mainly in Zurich and London), product managers, and designers to develop industry-leading automation and experiences — while many in our space still rely on manual processes.

In the first 30 days:

• Be paired with an onboarding buddy who will introduce you to the world of equity management
• Get to know our engineering team, product managers, and designers
• Understand how your team’s surface area connects to the broader Ledgy platform
• Start contributing to the codebase with the guidance of experienced team members

In the first 3 months:

• Ship independently on impactful product features and improvements
• Participate in architecture discussions around scaling workflows, data models, and integrations
• Work alongside other engineers to implement robust, reliable data flows
• Develop a deep understanding of how companies manage and automate equity
• Participate in code reviews and help maintain our engineering standards

In the first 6–12 months:

• Take ownership of key features and improvements within your team’s domain
• Help shape the technical direction and architecture of Ledgy’s equity platform
• Collaborate with Product and Design to deliver polished, user-centric experiences
• Mentor other engineers and share expertise in automation, data modeling, and scalability

Teams we’re hiring for

Core Equity — Owns the foundational logic that powers Ledgy’s equity engine. Every equity-related event  such as issuing shares, creating new pools, or adjusting ownership — generates transactions. This team defines and maintains the transaction logic, data model, and core domain behaviour that ensure Ledgy’s platform remains accurate, scalable, and compliant.

Workflows & Automation — Focuses on automating complex equity workflows and integrating with third-party services, including the trading exchange. The team builds systems that help company admins efficiently onboard and offboard employees, automate equity grants and terminations, and enable employees to sell their shares seamlessly once vested.

Reporting — Transforms Ledgy’s core equity data into financial, operational, and compliance reports. The team manages large, complex datasets and ensures reporting is accurate, performant, and reliable across jurisdictions and company structures. Their work powers the insights companies and auditors rely on for decision-making and transparency.

The job is a good fit if:

• You have 7+ years of experience working as a Software Engineer
• You're excited about the impact of equity on entrepreneurship and its real-world impact for companies
• You enjoy tackling complex financial data transformations and compliance requirements
• You enjoy writing clean, maintainable TypeScript code, both in the backend and frontend
• You are excited to work with React, NodeJS, and MongoDB
• You thrive in collaborative environments and enjoy pair programming
• You take pride in creating robust, tested solutions for critical business operations

Being part of Ledgy means:

• Recharge and re-energize with flexible working hours, 25 days of vacation, and up to 40 days of remote work from outside your home country.
• We make space for your own professional development, with a generous yearly learning & development budget.
• This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. All salaries are aligned with competitively benchmarked ranges based on work location and levelling.
• For candidates based in London or Zurich we use a hybrid work model of 1 day in the office per week.

Our tech stack:

We have a modern, cohesive stack that lets us move fast while maintaining quality:

• Language: TypeScript
• Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS, tRPC
• Backend: tRPC, Node.js, MongoDB
• Infrastructure: GCP, Terraform Cloud, Kubernetes, Docker, Github Actions

The interview process:

• CV Review: we review your resume to see if we might be a good fit
• Getting to know you (30 min): meet with someone from our people team to talk about your experience and to answer questions about the role
• Live Coding (75 min): We'll present you with an equity domain problem to solve collaboratively using your preferred language and IDE
• System Design (60 min): You'll walk us through an architecture you've significantly contributed to in the past, and we'll explore different aspects based on your experience
• Culture Interview: A chance to meet one of our founders for a 30 minute chat about Ledgy’s mission and values
• Offer 🎉