Forward Deployed Applications - Software Engineer

PhysicsX is building a new category of engineering software — one where physics AI models don't just augment existing workflows, but fundamentally redefine what's possible in design and operations. Our Product team is expanding a portfolio of Engineering Applications that bring this capability directly to the engineers, scientists, and operators who need it most. If you're excited by the challenge of turning cutting-edge AI and simulation research into tools that change how the world's most complex engineering problems get solved, this is the team to do it with.

You'll join the Forward Deployed Applications team, a group that sits at the intersection of product development and customer delivery. Your primary mission is to work closely with customers on real engineering problems — and to turn what you learn into generalised, reusable product capabilities that raise the ceiling for every PhysicsX user. This isn't a traditional customer-facing role or a pure product role: it's the feedback loop that keeps our product grounded in genuine engineering value. You'll work alongside simulation engineers, data scientists, ML engineers, and backend developers, with significant autonomy in how you approach problems, and a direct line of influence over the direction of our growing application suite.

• You'll spend meaningful time in conversations — with users unpacking real engineering workflows, with Delivery teams translating those needs into concrete requirements, and with the Product team debating which patterns are worth generalising. Expect to be a connector as much as a builder, and to develop a strong instinct for which customer insights have product-wide implications.
• You'll be expected to bring both rigour and initiative: writing clean, well-considered code, contributing to architecture decisions, and pushing back constructively when a bespoke solution risks diverging from the product vision. This team operates with a high degree of autonomy, and the expectation is that you use it thoughtfully.
• On any given day you might be designing a 3D visualisation that makes a fluid dynamics simulation instantly legible to a non-specialist, building a React interface that surfaces AI model outputs in a live operational context, or refactoring a one-off delivery prototype into something the whole platform can build on. The problems are genuinely novel, and the solutions you build here will define what engineering software looks like next.
• Contribute to a positive team culture through active participation, clear communication of progress and blockers, constructive code reviews, mentoring of junior engineers, and effective cross-functional collaboration with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrate a strong commitment to continuous development by seeking feedback, staying current with technology trends, sharing knowledge through guilds and documentation, and building expertise across multiple technical areas.
• Take initiative in breaking down complex problems, evaluating trade-offs, documenting technical decisions, and strategically addressing technical debt while balancing short-term delivery with long-term vision and business context.
• Write clean, maintainable code following established standards, implement comprehensive testing strategies across the test pyramid, apply secure coding practices and stay current with security threats, and build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and deployment processes with confidence.
• Gather requirements and collaborate with stakeholders to define scope, design systems and interfaces that balance functional and non-functional requirements, document technical decisions clearly, and identify and resolve performance bottlenecks through profiling and optimisation.
• Travel to customer sites in North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, for an average of 3-4 weeks per quarter, where you'll collaborate closely with customers to build solutions on-site

• Effectively leverage HTTP frameworks and concurrency primitives, contribute to service interface design using patterns such as Protobuf and OpenAPI, develop composable client libraries with code-generation tooling, and ensure service availability through throttling, rate-limiting, and standard resilience techniques.
• Write clear and effective SQL with an understanding of database implementation trade-offs, leverage caching, memoisation, and messaging systems such as AMQP or NATS, and understand service discovery, schema drift mitigation, and the principles of 12-factor apps.
• Create API tests using mock services, contribute to service documentation, understand authentication flows and middleware patterns, and contrast architectural approaches such as REST, RPC, gRPC, and GraphQL to make informed design decisions.
• Build responsive web applications using modern frameworks such as React, Vue, or Angular, effectively translate graphic designs to web interfaces with semantic HTML, and develop reusable UI components that maintain design system consistency with a strong understanding of UX practices.
• Write clean type annotations and leverage generics to add type safety across API responses and external data, manage client-server state synchronisation with optimistic updates, and effectively use frontend build tools and bundlers such as Webpack, Vite, or Rollup.
• Understand the browser rendering model and JavaScript execution to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, leverage HTTP methods, caching headers, CORS, and status codes effectively, and implement security mitigations for CSRF, XSS, and authentication using cookies and local storage.

• Confidence working across the full stack — you're at home reasoning about frontend architecture in React and TypeScript as well as backend design in Python, and you understand the tradeoffs in both well enough to make and defend pragmatic decisions.
• Experience building on top of large, established codebases — you know how to move deliberately, contribute incrementally, and improve things without breaking them.
• A track record of delivering in customer-facing or time-pressured environments, with the judgement to know when to ship something fit for purpose now and when to push back in the interest of a more durable solution.
• The instinct to treat customer engagements as a source of product insight — you naturally ask why a workflow exists, not just how to support it, and you channel that curiosity into constructive, well-reasoned feedback to product teams.
• Familiarity with 2D and 3D data visualisation and the ability to make complex simulation or model outputs legible and useful to non-specialist users.
• An agile, collaborative working style — you engage seriously with code review, testing, and CI/CD, and you're as invested in the quality of your team's output as your own

What we offer

Build what actually matters

Help shape an AI-native engineering company at a formative stage, tackling problems that genuinely matter for industry and society. This is work with real-world impact - and something you can be proud to stand behind.

Learn alongside exceptional people

Work with a high-caliber, collaborative team of engineers, scientists, and operators who care deeply about doing great work, and about helping each other get better. We come from diverse backgrounds, but we share a commitment to operating at the highest level and addressing some of the most complex challenges out there. If you’re ambitious, thoughtful, and driven by impact, you’ll feel at home.

Influence over hierarchy

We operate with a flat structure: good ideas win - wherever they come from. Questioning assumptions and challenging the status quo isn’t just welcomed, it’s expected.

Sustainable pace, long-term ambition

Building meaningful technology is a marathon, not a sprint. We believe in balancing focused, ambitious work with a life beyond it. Our hybrid model blends time together in our Shoreditch office with work-from-home days, giving you the flexibility to work sustainably while staying connected in person.

And it doesn’t stop there …

🚀 Equity options - share meaningfully in the company you’re helping to build.

🏦 10% employer pension contribution - because investing in future matters.

🍽️ Free office lunches - to keep you energised and focused.

👶 Enhanced parental leave - 3 months full pay paternity and 6 months full pay maternity leave, to provide extra flexibility during the moments that matter most.

🍼 YellowNest nursery scheme - to help working parents manage childcare costs.

☀️ 25 days of Annual Leave (+ Public Holidays) - because taking time to rest matters.

🏥 Private medical insurance - 100% employee cover, giving you complete peace of mind.

💪 Wellhub Subscription - gain access to thousands of gyms, classes and wellness apps, supporting both physical and mental wellbeing.

👀 Eye tests - because good work depends on good health.

📈 Personal development - dedicated support for learning, development, and leveling up over time.

💛 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) - confidential wellbeing support, available whenever you need it.

🚲 Bike2Work scheme and 🚆 Season ticket loan - to make getting to work easier and greener.

🚗 Octopus EV salary sacrifice - for a simpler, more sustainable way to drive electric.

🔎 Watch this space, we’re continuing to build this as we grow…