UNLIKELY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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Announcement:

Unlikely AI raises $20m in oversubscribed seed round

ABOUT US

Unlikely AI is an Artificial Intelligence start-up based in London.

We are a talented team taking an ambitious, fresh look at artificial intelligence. Most of our work has not yet been announced.

However, an early example illustrating some of what we can do is Crossword Genius - an app containing an AI, Ross, who can solve and explain even the most difficult cryptic crossword clues. The app also uses state-of-the-art machine vision to read in crosswords found in newspapers via the smartphone camera and allow solving on your device.

FIND OUT MORE

WE'RE HIRING!

For more information contact us at jobs@unlikely.ai

Please check on the jobs detailed below to read the job specifications

VP Engineering

Vice President of Engineering

Unlikely AI is a contrarian Artificial Intelligence start-up founded by William Tunstall-Pedoe.

William is best known for his key role in the creation of Alexa following the acquisition by Amazon of his first start-up, the voice assistant company Evi. Amazon has sold hundreds of millions of Alexa devices and the product is probably the best known Artificial Intelligence product that exists. Unlikely AI is his next start-up with ambitions to exceed that earlier success.

We are building an extremely exciting AI platform and associated applications using novel and potentially revolutionary techniques. This is a start-up which can realistically change what is possible for software if we succeed and much of what we need to prove comes under the heading of engineering: scaling and innovating to turn the technology we have developed into magical products that will positively affect the lives of billions of people.

The company has recently closed an oversubscribed $20m round and one of our first tasks is building our world-class engineering team to solve those problems and build those products. To do this requires an exceptional engineering leader to build and lead this team and the company to success.

We consider this role to be a C-level role, reporting directly to the CEO. It is the role which can be most influential on our success at this stage and will be responsible for much of the headcount. We are flexible on job title but consider VP Engineering to be the most descriptive of the role with a focus on management and delivery of world class technical talent and engineering delivery. (It would be Chief Engineering Officer if the English word for engineering did not begin with an 'e').

Compensation will be through significant cash compensation and generous share options. The company has a tax-efficient EMI share option scheme set up (not available to larger companies) where no tax is due in the UK on the issuing, vesting or exercising of options. This scheme allows us to provide substantial exposure to the success of the company without taxes being paid before sale of the shares.

Location:

We are currently working hybrid with an office in central London (opposite Holborn tube station) transitioning from more than two years when we were fully remote during covid. Things are still evolving but we are heading towards a regime where teams will be required to be present in the office at least one day per week, where the office space is also available for anyone who wants it and with remote/zoom/slack work being done at other times. For this we require the candidate to be or relocate within commuting distance of central London. We will enthusiastically consider candidates from all over the world however and if you do not currently have the right to work in the UK we have visa sponsor status and will assist in obtaining you a visa.

Key requirements:

Experience building and managing a world-class engineering team in a fast growing, deeply technical, successful start-up.
Deep understanding of how to find, inspire, motivate and retain top engineering talent.
Deep understanding of how to manage a world-class engineering team to deliver world-changing products and overcome technical barriers.
Genuine 'think big' mentality - unafraid to shoot for extraordinary outcomes (in a step-by-step fashion)
Tolerance for ambiguity and substantial technical risk.
Deeply knowledgeable about best practice for running world-class engineering teams in an early start-up
Ability to contribute more broadly to our success by being a key member of our management team.
Someone fully on board with and enthusiastic about our culture and principles: https://unlikely.ai/principles/

Desirable requirements:

Strong academic background: graduate of a top university
Familiarity with our technical stack: Java + Spring Boot; Typescript + React; MongoDB + Elasticsearch + Redis; AWS

Software Engineer

Unlikely AI is a contrarian Artificial Intelligence start-up founded by William Tunstall-Pedoe.

William is best known for his key role in the creation of Alexa following the acquisition by Amazon of his first start-up, the voice assistant company Evi. Unlikely AI is his next start-up with ambitions to exceed that earlier success.

This is a key opportunity to join us as an early employee, to make a significant impact on the fortunes of the business and help define the company, culture, product and software engineering practices. Please see our Company Principles to understand the core things we value – in particular we are looking for exceptional people who are willing to tackle some of the most difficult technical problems there are, in order to create something extraordinary with huge impact.

We are building an extremely exciting AI platform and associated applications using novel and potentially revolutionary techniques.

Our team is currently small and we are looking for extremely smart and dedicated software developers of all levels of experience to help solve some very difficult engineering problems.

Compensation will be through salary and generous share options. The company has a tax-efficient EMI share option scheme set up (not available to larger companies) which allows us to provide real exposure to the success of the company without taxes being due when they are paid.

Location:

We are based in London. After two years of operating completely remotely during COVID we are now operating a hybrid regime where we have a small office near Holborn tube station which is available to anyone who wants to work there. We also have occasional team days where everyone meets face to face and days where people work heads down from home, communicating with colleagues using slack and zoom.

Required:

A computer science or engineering degree
2+ years of experience of commercial software engineering (or more if applying for a more senior role)
Exceptional coding ability
Desire to solve really difficult software engineering problems
Ability or desire to learn and code in Java
Understanding of modern best practices for agile software development
Understanding of the architectural techniques needed to build massively-scalable systems

Desirable but not required:

4+ years of experience with Java
Experience of AWS and building scalable systems within it
Experience and ability coding in Python and C++
Understanding of the state-of-the-art in Artificial Intelligence
Understanding of modern machine-learning techniques

To apply please send your resume and a covering email to jobs@unlikely.ai or use the form below.