Senior Full-Stack Engineer (AI & Automation)
Join the founding team of Runation, our new AI automation company, and take over the technology behind it, HMD Publishing and KindleFish. Grow with us as we add new projects.
- Department
- Operations
- Commitment
- Full-time
- Location
- Remote — worldwide
- Pay
- Based on experience. We set pay for the right person, not a fixed band. Put your expected annual salary in GBP on the form; applications without one will not be considered.
We are not hiring someone to work through a ticket queue. We are building the team that will grow our new company, and we want you to be one of the first people on it.
HMD Publishing is a UK publishing services company that has taken more than 10,000 books to market for authors in 47 countries. Our new company, Runation (runation.co.uk), builds business systems and AI automation for other companies: it connects the tools they already use and automates the repetitive work between them. We also run KindleFish, and more projects are on the way. All of it runs on software we build and maintain ourselves: websites and client portals, payments, a self-hosted CRM, automations, and AI agents that do real work in Slack and across our systems.
Today the founder runs all of this. Your job is to take it over: learn how it works, keep it healthy, and build what comes next, so the founder can focus on growing the business. As Runation grows, so does this role. We want you to help shape what we build for clients, help choose the people who join after you, and grow into leading our technology.
We build with Claude Code and other AI tools, and we expect you to as well. But AI writes code that looks right and is wrong, and you will be the person who catches it. Every change goes through pull requests, automated checks and a written plan. You will work inside that system, improve it, and be trusted to decide what is safe to ship.
This role is fully remote and open worldwide, with at least four hours of overlap with UK business hours each day.
How we hire: shortlisted candidates complete a paid practical task on a real (sanitised) codebase. You can use any AI tools you like. We judge whether your solution works, how you checked it, and how clearly you explain it.
To apply, upload your CV, add your GitHub or portfolio link, and enter your expected annual salary in GBP. In the "Why do you want to join" box, start with the word Lighthouse, then tell us about one time an AI coding tool gave you wrong or unsafe code: how you noticed and what you did.
What you'll do
- Take ownership of our Next.js, React and TypeScript websites and internal tools, from bug fixes to new features
- Look after our Supabase (PostgreSQL) databases, Stripe payments and login systems safely, with backups and a rollback plan for every change
- Run and improve our self-hosted services, including Twenty CRM and n8n, on our cloud servers
- Build and maintain AI agents and Slack bots that connect our CRM, website and business tools
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- Direct AI coding tools such as Claude Code and Cursor, review what they produce, and decide what is safe to ship
- Keep our CI/CD, Vercel deployments, monitoring and alerts working, and fix problems before customers notice them
- Plan and estimate new projects honestly, and explain progress to the founder in plain English
- Document how our systems work so the next engineer can pick them up
What we're looking for
- 5+ years building and running production web applications: not only writing the code, but keeping it live
- Strong TypeScript, React and Next.js, plus Node.js, REST APIs and webhooks
- Solid PostgreSQL experience (Supabase is a plus), including migrations you have run on live data
- Comfortable with Docker, Linux servers and self-hosted applications
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- Daily use of AI coding tools, with the judgement to spot when their output is wrong or unsafe
- A security-first approach to payments, authentication and customer data
- Clear written English, and the ability to explain technical decisions to a non-technical founder
- Able to work independently, own outcomes, and say early when something is going off track
Nice to have
None of these are required. They are the things that would make you stand out.
- Experience with Twenty CRM, n8n or Stripe
- LLM API integrations (Anthropic, OpenAI) and multi-agent systems
- Slack app and bot development
- Experience as the lead or only engineer at a small company
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- Background in publishing, an agency or creative services
Other roles open right now
Apply for Senior Full-Stack Engineer (AI & Automation)
Takes about ten minutes. You will be asked for a short intro video after you submit.