Senior Software Engineer UK Visa Sponsorship

Job Description

About Ankar

The old ways of innovating are holding everyone back. Companies pour massive effort into R&D and intellectual property, but too much time gets lost in repetitive manual tasks—digging through patent databases, handling paperwork, and chasing administrative details—instead of actually creating breakthroughs. Today, intangible assets like IP make up roughly 90% of the value in S&P 500 companies, yet the tools supporting this work feel stuck in another era.

That’s where Ankar comes in. We’re building the AI-powered operating system for innovation—a unified platform that helps teams generate ideas, assess novelty, draft strong patents, respond to office actions, detect infringement risks, and protect inventions more effectively. Our goal is simple: let inventors and patent professionals focus on what matters most, while AI handles the heavy lifting.

We’re moving fast and gaining real traction:

• Raised over $24M (including a recent $20M Series A) from top investors like Atomico, Index Ventures, Norrsken, and Daphni
• Backed by notable angels, including founders and leaders from Hugging Face, Datadog, DeepMind, and OpenAI
• Already trusted by innovative organizations such as Fortune 500 giant L’Oréal and leading law firm Vorys
• Building a strong team with experience from places like Palantir, Amazon, and BCG

We’re just getting started in a massive $1T+ market, and we’re looking for exceptional engineers who want to own big challenges and ship work that directly moves the needle.

The Role

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll play a central role in building and scaling the core platform that patent and R&D teams rely on every day. This is a high-ownership position where you’ll design, implement, and iterate on production systems end-to-end—working closely with product, design, and real customers.

What you’ll do day-to-day

• Design and build reliable, scalable features across frontend, backend, and infrastructure
• Turn vague or complex requirements into clean, maintainable code that performs under real-world pressure
• Ship quickly, gather user feedback, and refine the product in tight cycles
• Take full ownership of projects from initial scoping through deployment, monitoring, and ongoing improvements
• Help establish engineering best practices, patterns, and technical direction as the company grows
• Collaborate directly with product managers, designers, and customers to make sure we’re solving the right problems in the best way

Who we’re looking for

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of owning and shipping full production systems
• Strong ability to think in systems—designing robust, maintainable architecture and debugging tough issues across the stack
• High agency: you take initiative, drive outcomes independently, and don’t need everything spelled out to make progress
• Comfortable in fast-moving environments where priorities shift and iteration is constant
• Genuine excitement about AI and its potential (ideally shown through past work, side projects, or contributions)
• Solid product sense—you understand how to balance speed, quality, and user needs
• Clear communicator who can work effectively with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders (including direct customer conversations when it helps)

Nice-to-haves / what we use

• Experience in fast-paced startups or high-ownership roles
• Familiarity with our stack: Java, Python, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, React, TypeScript
• Background in AI/ML-adjacent systems, large-scale data processing, or legal/tech workflows

What success looks like here

• Delivering meaningful product improvements on a weekly basis
• Spotting and tackling important problems proactively—not just completing assigned tickets
• Building trust through reliable execution and thoughtful engineering decisions
• Creating systems that scale smoothly as our user base and feature set grow

Other details

• Location: Flexible (remote-friendly with strong preference for strong overlap with European/US time zones)
• Visa sponsorship: Available
• Competitive compensation + meaningful equity in a fast-growing company

If you’re someone who loves building products people actually depend on, thrives on ownership, and wants to help redefine how the world innovates and protects ideas—let’s talk.

Apply or reach out if this sounds like you. We’re excited to meet builders ready to make a real impact.