Founding Full-Stack Product Engineer / Technical Lead

STEM Apply
Location: North East England / Hybrid / Remote considered
Type: Full-time, Contract or Short-Term Launch Contract considered
Start: Immediate
Salary / Rate: Competitive, dependent on experience

About STEM Applied Learning

STEM Applied Learning is a new technical education company being built around three core areas:

1. Online Education
Interactive STEM and engineering courses covering areas including CNC programming, mathematics, physics, electronics, Python, manufacturing and technical skills.

2. Immersive VR Learning
Practical engineering and STEM experiences designed for VR, including interactive engineering laboratories, machine simulations and practical learning environments.

3. Enterprise Education
A platform for colleges, universities and engineering organisations to deliver technical learning, monitor learner progress and eventually create and manage their own training content.

The product is already well into development.

We have an existing web platform, substantial course content, interactive engineering software, a CNC programming simulator, learner systems, a developing content-authoring platform and a separate Unity VR product.

We are now approaching launch and need an experienced engineer who can help turn what has already been built into a robust, scalable commercial platform.

The Role

We are looking for a highly capable Full-Stack Product Engineer / Technical Lead who enjoys building real products rather than simply completing tickets.

This is a hands-on role.

You will work directly with the founder and alongside an unusual development workflow involving human developers and AI engineering systems including Claude, Codex and Grok.

The immediate priority is taking STEM Apply from an advanced development product to a production-ready platform.

You will be expected to understand an existing codebase quickly, identify weaknesses, make pragmatic engineering decisions and take ownership of the technical path to launch.

Immediate Priorities

The first stage of the role will focus heavily on launch readiness.

This will include:

• Reviewing and understanding the existing STEM Apply architecture and GitHub repositories
• Connecting and validating the production backend/server infrastructure
• Completing production authentication and user-account workflows
• Ensuring learner progress, assessments and course data persist correctly
• Preparing Supabase/PostgreSQL infrastructure for production use
• Implementing or validating payment infrastructure
• Building reliable development, staging and production environments
• Improving CI/CD and automated testing
• Performing load and performance testing
• Improving application security
• Setting up monitoring, logging, backups and recovery processes
• Ensuring the platform performs reliably across mobile and desktop devices
• Helping prepare the website for potentially high volumes of users
• Reviewing and helping complete the STEM Apply creator/content-authoring platform
• Integrating course videos and supporting media into the learner and purchase experience
• Reviewing work produced by AI development agents before it enters production
• Identifying technical debt that genuinely threatens launch while avoiding unnecessary rewrites

Longer-Term Work

Following launch, the role could develop into a major technical leadership position within STEM Apply.

Future projects include:

• Advanced interactive STEM learning tools
• Engineering simulation software
• CNC and manufacturing simulation
• Institution dashboards
• Cohort and learner management
• Reporting and analytics
• Creator tools allowing technical specialists to build interactive learning material
• Enterprise SaaS functionality
• AI-assisted course creation
• Assessment and certification infrastructure
• APIs and integrations
• Multi-language learning
• Collaboration between the web platform and immersive VR environments
• Scaling STEM Apply internationally

Current Technology

Experience with our exact stack is highly desirable, although strong engineers from similar modern web stacks are welcome.

Current technologies include:

• TypeScript
• React
• Next.js
• Node.js
• Supabase
• PostgreSQL
• Git / GitHub
• GitHub Actions
• Modern authentication and role-based access control
• Automated testing
• Browser / end-to-end testing

Our VR platform is being developed separately using Unity and C#.

What We Are Looking For

We are particularly interested in someone with strong experience in:

• Modern React and Next.js applications
• TypeScript
• Node.js
• PostgreSQL
• Supabase or similar backend/database platforms
• Authentication and authorisation
• Database design
• REST APIs / server-side application architecture
• Cloud deployment
• CI/CD
• GitHub Actions
• Automated testing
• Production debugging
• Performance optimisation
• Load testing
• Application security
• Monitoring and observability
• Payment integration such as Stripe

You should be comfortable working within an existing codebase rather than insisting on rebuilding everything from scratch.

The Person

We are looking for somebody who:

• Is technically strong and genuinely enjoys solving difficult problems
• Can work independently
• Can make sensible decisions under time pressure
• Understands the difference between prototype code and production software
• Is comfortable taking ownership of important technical systems
• Can communicate clearly with a non-traditional technical founder
• Is willing to challenge poor technical decisions when necessary
• Understands commercial priorities as well as engineering priorities
• Can distinguish launch-critical work from features that can wait
• Enjoys experimenting with emerging technology
• Is comfortable using AI coding tools as part of a modern engineering workflow

Experience in EdTech, engineering, simulation, SaaS or technical training would be useful but is not essential.

AI-Assisted Development

STEM Apply uses AI development systems.

Claude, OpenAI Codex, Grok and other tools are used for development, testing, research and technical review.

We are not looking for somebody who feels threatened by these tools.

We are looking for an engineer who can use them intelligently.

The successful candidate should be comfortable reviewing AI-generated code, identifying errors, improving architecture and using AI to significantly increase development velocity.

AI systems should amplify good engineering judgement, not replace it.

Why Join STEM Apply?

This is an opportunity to join extremely early in the development of an ambitious engineering and technical education company.

You will not simply be maintaining another corporate website.

You will have the opportunity to help build:

• Interactive engineering education
• Engineering simulation software
• VR learning environments
• Creator tools
• AI-assisted learning technology
• Enterprise education systems

The aim is to build a platform capable of being used by individual learners, colleges, universities and engineering companies.

For the right person, there is significant opportunity to grow with the company and influence the technical architecture from an early stage.

Application

Please send:

• Your CV or LinkedIn profile
• Examples of products or platforms you have personally built
• GitHub profile if available
• A brief description of the most technically challenging production system you have worked on
• Your experience with React / Next.js / TypeScript
• Your experience with databases, authentication and cloud deployment
• Any experience using AI development tools such as Claude, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot or similar
• Your availability to start

We are particularly interested in applicants who can demonstrate what they have actually shipped rather than simply listing technologies they have used.

Pay: £39,000.00-£52,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Casual dress
• Free or subsidised travel
• Free parking
• On-site parking

Work Location: Remote