Full-Stack AI Product Engineer at The in Manchester, Greater Manchester

Job description

• We're looking for a Full-Stack AI Product Engineer to join our growing AI team and take ownership of building, shipping and evolving AI-powered products.
• This is not a traditional software engineering role.
• We are looking for a highly autonomous builder who can take an idea from a conversation or rough brief and turn it into a working product, rapidly.
• Understanding the problem
• Deciding how to solve it
• Building the front end and back end
• Integrating APIs and AI models
• Deploying the product
• Putting it in front of clients
• Collecting feedback
• Fixing bugs
• Shipping the next version
• You'll be expected to own what you build.
• There won't always be a detailed specification, a perfectly groomed backlog or another team waiting to take over at the next stage. You'll work directly with our Chief AI Officer, clients and internal teams to understand what needs to exist, and then make it exist.
• We believe AI-assisted development fundamentally changes how quickly small, highly capable teams can ship software. Deep enablement with Claude Code is therefore a mandatory part of this role, not a nice-to-have.
• We want someone who has embraced this new way of engineering: using Claude Code and modern AI development tools to dramatically accelerate prototyping, development, debugging, testing and iteration while still making strong technical decisions and taking responsibility for the software they ship.
• Build. Ship. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
• The most important characteristic is ownership.
• You don't need someone to turn a problem into twenty Jira tickets before you can start.
• "Could we build something that does this?"
• …and immediately start thinking about the user experience, architecture, APIs, data model, AI components and fastest route to getting a working version in front of someone.
• You're comfortable making decisions.
• You're comfortable being wrong, learning quickly and changing direction.
• And when something you've built breaks, your instinct is to understand it and fix it.
• You get energy from shipping things
• You like owning a product rather than owning one small part of a system
• You're comfortable moving from React to an API integration to a database issue to a client demo in the same day
• You instinctively prototype rather than endlessly discuss
• You use AI to increase your output dramatically
• You don't need perfect requirements before starting
• You care about whether users actually find what you've built useful
• You take responsibility when something isn't working
• You naturally spot improvements and build them
• You would rather have something useful live this week than something theoretically perfect six months from now
• You want to work exclusively on one narrow layer of the stack
• You expect detailed technical specifications before beginning work
• You prefer long engineering cycles and heavily structured hand-offs
• You want product managers to make every product decision for you
• You see presenting to clients as somebody else's job
• You see deployment, monitoring and production bugs as somebody else's responsibility
• You primarily use AI coding tools for occasional autocomplete or small snippets
• You enjoy discussing what could be built significantly more than actually building it

Responsibilities

• Own products and features from initial concept through to production deployment
• User interfaces
• Application logic
• APIs
• Databases
• Authentication
• Third-party integrations
• AI systems
• Turn loosely defined ideas and client problems into working software without waiting for exhaustive specifications
• Make pragmatic technical and product decisions that keep projects moving
• Take responsibility for the products you build after launch, including reliability, bugs, improvements and new features
• Move comfortably between greenfield products and improving existing applications
• Use Claude Code as a core part of your development workflow every day
• Use AI-assisted development to dramatically increase the speed at which ideas become production software
• Rapidly prototype approaches, evaluate them and turn the strongest ideas into robust products
• Planning
• Implementation
• Refactoring
• Debugging
• Testing
• Documentation
• Continually experiment with new AI development workflows, models, agents and tooling
• Help define how an AI-native engineering team should operate
• Hands-on Claude Code experience is mandatory for this role.
• We're specifically looking for engineers who see AI coding tools as a fundamental change to software development rather than an occasional productivity aid.
• Get working versions of products into users' hands quickly
• Favour fast feedback loops over long development cycles
• Deploy, observe, learn and iterate
• Diagnose and fix production issues without waiting for someone else to own the problem
• Respond quickly to client feedback and product opportunities
• Continuously improve existing products rather than considering them "finished" after launch
• We value velocity with ownership. Moving quickly does not mean throwing software over the wall. It means being accountable for making it work.
• A major initial focus will be NewGen Multiple, our proprietary technology platform and one of the biggest bets we're making as an agency.
• Multiple is already live, already being used with clients and already gaining attention at industry events. You'll play a major role in taking it to the next level.
• Own the technical development and continued evolution of Multiple
• Build and ship new functionality
• Improve existing features and user journeys
• Maintain and evolve the architecture as the platform grows
• Integrate social platforms, third-party services and AI capabilities
• Respond directly to bugs, feedback and client requests
• Identify opportunities to improve the product without needing to be told what to build
• Balance rapid delivery with reliability, security and maintainability
• This is not an engineering role hidden behind a product team.
• You'll regularly be close to the people using what you build.
• Join client conversations to understand problems first-hand
• Translate ambiguous client needs into technical solutions
• Demo products and new functionality to clients and senior stakeholders
• Explain technical concepts clearly to non-technical audiences
• Gather feedback directly and turn it into improvements
• Support pitches, prototypes and experiments where technology can unlock new opportunities
• You should be equally comfortable opening a codebase and opening a client presentation.
• Build and maintain integrations with social platforms and third-party APIs
• Own integration health, authentication, permissions and platform compliance
• Debug issues across external APIs and services
• Stay ahead of platform changes and quickly adapt products when APIs or capabilities change
• Identify new APIs, models and technologies that could create useful product functionality
• We're building a different kind of technology team inside NewGen.
• You'll work closely with the Chief AI Officer and wider AI team to:
• Establish AI-native development practices
• Create reusable systems, components and infrastructure that make future products faster to build
• Share new Claude Code workflows and development techniques across the team
• Improve how we prototype, test, deploy and monitor products
• Document the things that matter without creating unnecessary process
• Help create a culture where talented individuals have the autonomy to build

Requirements

• Strong full-stack software engineering experience
• The ability to independently build and deploy production web applications
• Strong experience across modern front-end and back-end development
• Experience designing and working with APIs, databases and third-party services
• Experience deploying and operating applications in production
• Experience debugging issues across the full application stack
• Good understanding of software architecture, security, performance and reliability
• Experience integrating AI models and APIs into products
• Strong Git and modern software development fundamentals
• You must have meaningful hands-on experience using Claude Code for software development.
• We are specifically looking for someone who has learned how to use agentic coding tools to operate at significantly greater speed than a traditional development workflow.
• Explore and understand codebases
• Plan implementations
• Build features
• Create and modify front-end interfaces
• Build back-end services
• Integrate APIs
• Debug issues
• Write and run tests
• Refactor systems
• Review code
• Document applications
• Iterate rapidly on deployed products
• If your development workflow is fundamentally unchanged by AI coding tools, this probably isn't the right role.
• Experience building AI-native applications
• Experience shipping SaaS or platform products
• Experience with LLM APIs, agents, structured outputs, tool use or AI workflows
• Experience building integrations with major platforms
• Experience working in a startup, scale-up or similarly fast-moving environment
• Experience building products directly alongside users or clients
• An eye for product and UX, not just implementation
• Genuine enthusiasm for social, creator, gaming or creative technology
• You do not need to have previously held a Product Manager title.
• We care far more about whether you can identify what needs building and then build it.

Skills

Required

• Full-stack software engineering
• Front-end development (e.g., React)
• Back-end development
• API design and integration
• Database design and management
• Authentication
• Third-party integrations
• Deployment and production operations
• Debugging across the full stack
• Software architecture
• Security
• Performance

Preferred

• AI-native application development
• SaaS or platform product development
• Integrations with major platforms
• Startup/scale-up environment experience
• Product and UX sense
• Client-facing communication

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• 30 days holiday plus bank holidays, plus your birthday off
• Hybrid working from our Manchester office
• Company pension scheme
• Private health and wellbeing support
• Enhanced parental leave
• Personal learning and development budget
• Regular team socials and company events across our offices
• Access to the biggest events in social, gaming and creator culture
• The opportunity to build flagship technology products at one of the UK's fastest-growing independent agencies
• Significant autonomy to influence how NewGen builds technology and uses AI