Job Description
Senior/Staff Software Engineer
Location: Hybrid, Sheffield, UK
Type: Full-time, Permanent
Salary: £60,000 - £65,000 + Meaningful equity, Private healthcare & Pension
The hiring company is Sheffield based Deep Tech Start up building a new class of manufacturing technology - fast, digital, zero-waste, and fundamentally different to anything on the market today with a flexible approach towards production challenges.
Their system uses tens of thousands of digitally controlled pins to form a mould in minutes, thermoform a part directly over it, and then reconfigure into the next shape. No resin. No waste. No single-use tooling.
The Role
There's just one thing standing between their hardware and the world. The software. This is a high ownership position and you will own the full pipeline.
This is the founding software hire taking ownership of a green-field build - you set the architecture, choose the stack, and shape the software team from here. No legacy to inherit. No committee to negotiate with.
We require a computational geometry engineer who has shipped production C++ or Rust software that prepares geometry for a real-world manufacturing process - modelling the physics and material behaviour of that process in code:
Including
- Geometry engine - STL ingest, mesh repair, surface analysis, curvature and normal computation across meshes up to 500k+ triangles
- Multi-directional pin projection - projecting tens of thousands of pins from multiple tool directions, picking the right pin per region
- Split-line computation - deciding dynamically where coverage hands off between tools so the formed surface is seamless
- Surface mapping & gap resolution - turning a discrete pin field into something that behaves like a continuous mould
- Validation - predicting forming defects (undercuts, bridging, thinning) before they happen. Bar: zero defect escapes
- Compensation engine - an adaptive, data-driven system that learns from real forming results to refine material behaviour models over time
- Operator UI & machine output - a cross-platform desktop app a lab technician can drive a 60-stage case through in under two minutes of manual interaction
*One Non-Negotiable: You Build With AI*
Key Skills
- Deep C++ or Rust in a performance-critical production context
- Computational geometry, mesh processing, or 3D graphics background
- Shipped production desktop or embedded software
- Comfort owning a system end-to-end: architecture, implementation and performance
- Judgement to know when to build something clever and when to ship the simplest thing that works
Preferred
- Skills: GPU compute - CUDA, OpenCL, or compute shaders on real workload
- Familiarity with CGAL, libigl, Open3D, or equivalents
- Hands-on with CAD/CAM, slicer software, dental tech, additive manufacturing, or any field where geometry meets physical machines
- Software that talks to hardware - serial protocols, machine controllers, motion systems
- Cross-platform desktop UI work (Qt, Electron, or a strong opinion on what's better)
Experience required
- Professional software engineering experience. Could be a strong senior pushing into staff, or an established staff/principal engineer wanting a founding role
- Has been the technical owner of a substantial system (sole engineer at a small company, founding engineer at a start-up, or tech lead of a small focused team within a CAD/CAM/CAE house)
- Comfortable being the software person in a hardware company (substantial work is geometric and physical modelling)
Nice to have:
- A degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, or Computational Engineering
- A Masters or PhD in computational geometry, applied mathematics, continuum mechanics, computer graphics, or a related discipline
- Self-taught engineers with a strong shipping record are equally valid
- Differential geometry, optimisation, or applied ML background
- Medical device software experience — MDR, FDA 510(k), IEC 62304