Why this Principal AI Engineer position is like Padel.

Padel was invented when someone didn’t have room for a tennis court, so they built something with constraints. You’ll have constraints too. A legacy system, an aggressive deadline, or a half-built data pipeline.

You’ll just have to build faster and sharper. Clever engineering wins points.

You’ll fly solo but also pair with Design, Product and Engineering. The best shots in padel come from a doubles pair working together.

You'll set the technical direction of how AI gets built into our product. Not as a nice-to-have, but as core infrastructure. In padel, technical direction matters more than raw power.

This is a senior IC role with real ownership. You’ll design the architecture, make the calls other engineers build against, and be the person trusted to know what's actually possible versus what's hype.

Padel is booming. But strip away the hype, and it's really just four people, a walled court, and a scoreline that ultimately humbles everyone.

You’ll own the product roadmap, from early prototyping through to production-grade systems serving real customer traffic. A padel rally often starts small but by the 3rd or 4th shot it's a full-court battle using every wall available.

You’ll design and build systems involving LLMs, RAG pipelines, fine-tuning, evals and agentic workflows, choosing the right tool for the problem. In padel, the smartest players don't just smash every ball - they choose the right shot for the situation.

In AI engineering, the best systems aren't the ones with the flashiest model up front, they're the ones where someone's covering the blind spot: the edge cases, the failure mode, that gotcha that only shows up once things are live. In padel, your partner is covering the angles you can’t see.

You’ll need deep, hands-on experience building and shipping production ML/AI systems, not just research or side projects. The practice court doesn’t count.

You must have experience taking a model or AI feature from 0-to-1 at a startup or scaleup. Not just practiced taking a shot in isolation. Every padel player remembers their first match and the moment theory met a live opponent.

Ideally you will have published research, boast open-source contributions, or a strong public technical presence in the ML/AI space. Padel’s growth came about because players, coaches and clubs promoted the game in public.

You’ll boast AI expertise underpinned by sound knowledge of the fundamentals i.e. you understand exactly what's happening under the hood of an LLM, not just how to call an API. Knowing the shot works is one thing; knowing why it works is what wins the point.

Experience with infrastructure for training or fine-tuning at scale (distributed training, GPU orchestration). Padel's biggest tournaments don't run on one court. They typically run on dozens, all synchronised, all feeding into the same result.

The AWS infrastructure you build will be robust, scalable and resilient - designed to take a hit. Paddles or “palas” are robust pieces of fibreglass, punched through with holes.

You’ll have experience of operating with high autonomy in a fast-moving environment. You don't need a fully-scoped ticket to start making progress. No one hands a padel player a fully-scripted play before a rally starts. They read the court, make the call, and adjust mid-point.

Showcase your excellent communication skills. You can explain a technical tradeoff to a non-technical stakeholder without losing nuance and context. Communicate clearly so no balls are dropped.

You'll operate at the intersection of applied research and production. Comfortable reading the latest scientific papers on Monday and shipping a model to production by Friday. In padel, the best players read the wall, the angle, and their opponent all at once. With no lag between the theory and the smash.

This role will have you bouncing off the walls when you hit a limit with a given model or run into an infra blocker. Embrace it, don’t fear it. In panel, the ball is allowed to bounce off the walls after being hit.

You’ll need to build accessible systems, docs and tooling so the next engineer can get into the game fast, without needing tons of context. Padel is way more accessible than tennis, which is one of the reasons it’s the fastest growing racquet sport right now.

You’ll be operating in a fast-moving environment where there’s no room for wasted effort. Every decision counts. A padel court is roughly a quarter the size of a tennis court: forcing tighter decisions, faster reactions and zero wasted movement.

Deliverable out of scope? Out of budget? Don’t call it dead. Track it, get under it, bring it back into play. In padel, you’re allowed the hit the ball clean out of court and still return it.

When something breaks, you’ll need to own it, not blame someone else. Padel is the only sport where you can lose a point, blame the wall, and somehow still be technically correct.

This job comes with high pressure. That’s why we pay you the big bucks (up to £200,000). A padel ball looks almost identical to a tennis ball, but with slightly less internal pressure.

Padel is 100% overpriced kit. We need 0% budget wasted on overpriced kit that looks good but doesn't move the needle.

Every padel court has that one guy who's clearly a failed tennis player working through some things. We're not looking for that energy. We need someone who has full skin in the game.

Padel is a sport for failed tennis players. Tennis is all sweat and no banter. This role is highly demanding. Failed engineers need not apply. Nor is it all sweat and no banter. Bring the technical grind sure but make the room enjoyable.

As our Principal AI Engineer, you’ll be running the show. Tennis is where you run a mile to hit a ball twice. Padel is tennis for people who got tired of running.

We don’t care if you’re an athlete or a socialite. Or both. Just as long as you’re good at your job and have a great time doing it. Padel players think they're socialites. Tennis players think they're athletes. Both are wrong. Both are having a great time.

Our team ethic is closer to padel than tennis. Padel takes 90 minutes and a WhatsApp full of drama. We work to fast turnarounds, tight feedback loops and yes, our Slack channel features more drama than the roadmap itself.

Our work environment is fast-paced, with plenty of noise in the room. You'll need to make the right call, even when you can't hear yourself think. Padel: noise so intense you can't hear your own smash go straight into the net. Tennis: silence so intense you can hear a pin drop.

You’ll know which battles to pick. And the difference between a fight worth having and one that's already been decided. Tennis players argue with umpires. Padel players argue with the wall. Neither argument has ever been won.

Think you can smash it out of the park? Get in touch. Please share a CV and a short covering letter explaining why we’d be a good match.