Open positions
otum is the data and automation engineering team for companies without one. We build the data platforms, back-office automation, and software companies usually need an in-house team for. Senior engineers scope each system, build it, and stay accountable for it.
We are a senior team, working across the UK and internationally. Teams stay small, everyone works directly with the client, and every build is reviewed by a senior engineer before it reaches them.
We are stack agnostic, which means we bring the right engineer to each job rather than bending every engineer to the same tools. You work in what you are genuinely strong in.
We work remotely, with a few hours of daily overlap for the client calls. Some meetings are fixed and there is the occasional trip to a client site. The rest is flexible, and we make time for learning and for reviewing each other's work.
You take products that have no playbook from zero to one, and then from one to many. You build a thin, real slice of the hard part first, grow it into a production product, and harden it to scale, all owned by the client outright. This is the custom side of otum.
You join the custom side of otum, working on our 0 to 1 and 1 to many builds, for founders building a first product and for teams building a venture inside a company. Teams are small and you work directly with the founder or the venture team. A senior engineer reviews every build before it reaches the client, and you review others' work in turn.
Build the riskiest unknown first, a thin slice of the real product running in the client's real environment, as production code rather than a throwaway prototype.
Grow that slice outward into a working product, against agreed milestones and with real, visible progress every couple of days, no big reveal at the end.
Take a build production-grade, monitoring and alerts live, rollback working, load-tested before real traffic, and runbooks written.
Harden a working prototype to scale in a deliberate pass, reinforcing what now takes load and replacing pieces under live traffic, rather than starting again.
Keep every trade-off written down, so nothing is hidden and the client can run it without us.
Work directly with the founder or the venture team, close enough to change direction fast when the plan turns out to be wrong.
Several years building products from zero to one in production, full stack, comfortable owning a whole build rather than a single layer.
A track record of taking a prototype to production-grade, monitoring, rollback, load, and on-call, not just a working demo.
Strong judgement on technical risk, able to find the one assumption that sinks a build and prove or kill it early.
Experience scaling a live system by hardening it under traffic, rather than rewriting from scratch.
Able to work directly with a founder or venture team, communicate constantly, and make every trade-off visible.
Remote. You can be based anywhere in the UK or internationally, as long as you keep a few hours of daily overlap with the team and the client. Some client calls are fixed, and there is the occasional trip to a client site.
Numbers you can trust, operations that run themselves, all built into your stack and owned by you. Tell us where you want the edge, and we'll build it.
You'll hear from an engineer the same working day, not a sales sequence.
A short call, then a plan, and we start with Proof Week or a full build.
A fixed fee agreed before anything starts, for Proof Week or the full build.