Founding Engineer (Full-Stack, AI-Native)

Bucharest Hub · Phase 1 Hire

Bucharest, Romania

Full-time FTE · Hybrid · AI-First Engineering

Salary £60k – £90k (RON equivalent)

Start Upon project trigger, Q2 / Q3 2026

Who We Are

Tribes Digital is a UK-founded digital delivery company transitioning to an AI-first, senior-led engineering model. We build complex web platforms, SaaS products, AI integrations, and digital systems for clients across the UK and Europe.

Our core technologies include Laravel, Python, React, and modern cloud infrastructure, but we are fundamentally product builders, not a framework-specific shop.

We are opening our first engineering hub in Bucharest, and this role is the founding hire that helps build it.

This is not a corporate engineering job. You will not be maintaining legacy systems or waiting for tickets. You will be building products from scratch, solving real problems for real clients, and shaping how the engineering team grows.

The Role

You are the first engineer in our Bucharest hub.

That means two things:

1. You will build the first systems, and you will help define how the team works.
2. You will work directly with our CTO and UK leadership, taking ideas, specifications, and client needs and turning them into real software.

You will build backend systems, contribute to frontend work where needed, design APIs, structure databases, and help deploy production systems. You will also operate in a modern AI-assisted development environment, where coding agents, AI testing tools, and LLM-assisted workflows are part of everyday engineering practice.

Your job is not just to write code. Your job is to build well-structured products quickly, using the best tools available.

What You Will Do

• Build and launch production web platforms from scratch
• Design backend systems, APIs, and database models
• Contribute to frontend development where required (React or similar)
• Use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate delivery
• Deploy and maintain systems in cloud environments
• Work closely with the CTO and delivery leads to translate product requirements into technical solutions
• Set early engineering standards and workflows for the Bucharest team
• Help review and guide code produced by future team members and AI tooling
• Participate in technical conversations with clients when required

What We Are Looking For

The essentials

• Strong full-stack development experience (5+ years)
• Strong understanding of engineering principles, and highly available, scalable architecture.
• Deep experience building production systems from the ground up
• Strong backend capability (Laravel, Python, Node or similar)
• Comfortable contributing to frontend development when needed
• Strong understanding of API design, data modelling, and system architecture
• Experience using AI development tools (Claude, Open Code, etc.)
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving, low-bureaucracy environment
• Excellent communication and product awareness
• You care about what is being built, not just the code.

Highly valued

• Laravel experience
• React or modern frontend frameworks
• Experience building SaaS products
• Startup or small-team engineering experience
• Experience working with UK or European clients

The Kind of Engineer Who Thrives Here

This role suits engineers who:

• Like building things from scratch
• Enjoy solving problems without layers of process
• Prefer ownership over tickets
• Use modern tools to move faster
• Want real influence over how engineering teams operate

If you are currently in a large corporate environment where architecture decisions take months and releases take weeks, this will feel very different. Here, small senior teams build serious systems quickly.

What We Offer

• Founding role in a new engineering hub
• Direct influence on how the team grows
• Salary £60k – £90k (paid locally in RON)
• Full AI development toolchain provided
• Workspace in a premium Bucharest hub (Mindspace / similar)
• Access to private healthcare and wellbeing support
• Generous holiday allowance and flexible working arrangements
• Direct access to leadership and decision makers
• Opportunity to help build a genuinely modern engineering team

Tribes is proud to be a Certified B Corporation, meaning we are committed to building a business that balances profit with purpose. We believe companies should create long-term value for clients, employees, communities, and the wider world. Our engineering teams are encouraged to build responsibly, think long-term, and contribute to technology that has a positive impact.

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Believe. Belong. Behold.