Founding Engineer

PAGEFIELD DIGITAL LAB

Pagefield Digital Lab is where we build production software, run R&D and lead innovation across the PPHC group, of which Pagefield is a wholly owned subsidiary. Our network of international sister agencies often looks to us for technical guidance and excellence.

Our ambition for being at the frontier extends beyond the internal. The communications industry is still catching up to where other professional services have been for a decade on data infrastructure, analytics and modelling. AI is part of the answer but not the whole one: real value comes from teams that can do the underlying data work as well as the AI work. Part of the Lab’s philosophy is that there is foundational work to be done before we can truly leverage AI. We are looking to set the standard for serious data and engineering work in the sector — doing it well and being visible about it.

The Lab has the autonomy and trajectory of an early-stage startup without the funding-round pressure. There is room to shape what comes next, and we plan to grow.

Our flagship product is a patented multi-agent LLM pipeline that audits how brands surface across major AI engines, leveraging big-data and rich-classification algorithms. A second product, focused on political intelligence over aggregated data — semantic retrieval, classification, modelling, and forecasting — is in development. Alongside products, we also do internal tooling, data infrastructure work, and scoped client engagements, from analytical dashboards to discourse research to applied NLP.

We are looking for an outstanding Senior Engineer to help us take Pagefield Digital Lab to the next level.

ROLE OVERVIEW

This is a hands-on engineering role, not a strategy, product management or oversight role. The Lab’s lead carries strategy, product direction and communication; your focus will be writing code, building systems, solving technical problems and shipping working software. You will be expected to take briefs and turn them into functional tools, with real latitude over how they are designed and delivered. The work is full-stack and varied.

What you’ll be doing day to day:

• Shipping features for flagship product — a production multi-agent, big-data system (TypeScript backend, Svelte frontend).
• Building out our second product (semantic retrieval, classification, and modelling over political data) from earlier-stage architecture.
• Designing data pipelines, analytical tooling, and dashboards for internal use and client work.
• Leading the technical side of client engagements — from brand audits and discourse research to applied NLP and forecasting.
• Owning the full delivery pipeline. You’ll set up CI/CD, write the tests, configure the environments, and keep deployments repeatable and rollback-safe.

What you’ll need:

• Strong TypeScript across the stack. Primary author of a TypeScript backend and a TypeScript or Svelte frontend (Svelte is what we currently use, but we don’t require you to know it day one).
• Self-sufficient on the technical side. Take a brief, return shipped software. Minimal hand-holding required.
• Production discipline. You know the difference between a demo and a product, and you ship the product.
• Strong product engineering instincts. Able to balance speed, quality, user need and technical debt.
• A track record with data or AI. Real work in at least one of: data engineering, analytics, ML, LLMs, agents, or NLP. Personal projects count.
• Comfortable being the person who actually builds the thing — from architecture and implementation through to testing, deployment, iteration and maintenance.
• Understanding of how to test, evaluate and improve AI-enabled systems, including failure modes, accuracy, repeatability and reliability.
• Security-conscious by default. Encryption, access control, input validation, and dependency hygiene are baseline habits. Auth flows, secrets management, and secure handling of sensitive data at rest and in transit are in your comfort zone.
• Comfort with confidentiality. Working with high-profile/high-exposure clients requires a high degree of discretion.
• Comfortable designing schemas, data models and queries for production systems.
• Ability to explain technical decisions and analytical findings clearly to non-technical colleagues and clients.

The following would also be beneficial:

• A second backend language — Python, Go, or Rust.
• Experience with LLM APIs, agentic systems, RAG, prompt engineering, or evals at production scale.
• Data engineering experience — ETL, analytical pipelines, warehousing, BI tooling, or ML in production.
• Awareness of data protection obligations (GDPR, UK DPA, and the basics of how jurisdiction affects what you can store, process, and transfer) and the judgment to know when to escalate to specialist counsel rather than improvise.
• Familiarity with Railway, Vercel, Cloudflare, Postgres.
• An unusual route in. Humanities-into-tech, music into engineering, consultancy into product.

Our offer

Alongside a competitive salary and the opportunity to work as part of a close-knit and collegiate team, we offer:

• Generous agency-wide and personal bonus initiatives
• Competitive salary in a London Living Wage accredited organisation
• Central London office in the heart of Soho
• True hybrid working culture with flexibility extended to all roles to work from home at own discretion
• Annual personal development budget
• Monthly personal allowance to cover your choice of gym, private healthcare or private members’ club membership
• Health and wellbeing cash-plan covering a wide range of everyday and preventative treatments including dental and optical, complementary and alternative therapies, as well as health screening and EAP
• Company pension scheme
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay
• Cycle scheme
• An active social calendar and networking opportunities in and out of the office
• Barista style coffee, pastries, cakes and fruit
• Office dogs

This is a unique agency looking for a special new team member. If you think that might be you, please contact talent@pagefield.co.uk with the following:

• Your CV;
• Two or three pieces of your work — GitHub, deployed projects, write-ups — with a sentence of context on each; and
• A short note (under 200 words) to explain what excites you about this role.

Our culture

Pagefield was born out of a desire to bring something different to the communications industry. We are an open-minded and inclusive workplace, and welcome applications from people who share our ambition to do things differently.

Please let us know if you would benefit from any specific support to enable you to take part in our recruitment process.

ABOUT US

Pagefield Group is a fully integrated, cross-party, strategic communications consultancy that offers specialist expertise in corporate campaigning, public affairs, public relations, digital communications, due diligence and policy and economic consultancy.

Founded in 2010 – and now proudly a subsidiary company within the international Public Policy Holding Company (PPHC) group – we’ve worked with hundreds of the world’s biggest brands, listed companies, fast-moving start-ups and challengers, inspiring charities, and extraordinary individuals. We provide our clients with best-in-class insight, creative thinking and we are strategically connected to the media, political and digital stakeholders our clients need to help them navigate an increasingly complex world. Since April 2026, we have also incorporated the team from WPI Strategy, who have further strengthened our expertise in research-driven advocacy.