Founding Optimization Engineer

About Zentio

We’re building the decision-making layer for the factories of tomorrow, the brain that plans, adapts, and optimizes production in real time. Our systems tackle the toughest challenges on the shop floor, allocating scarce resources, re-routing around machine breakdowns, and absorbing last-minute rush orders using machine learning, optimization, and agents. We operate at the core of the value chain, the shop floor where raw materials, machines, and people come together to create the products that drive entire businesses. From there we are expanding to shape decisions on what to produce, where to invest, and how to scale. We are building Software 3.0 systems that learn, reason, and continuously improve from the chaos of production. If you want to ship hard tech that actually changes how the world builds things, you will want to build it here.

Responsibilities

• Ship optimisation features end-to-end: model constraints, implement algorithms, expose clean APIs
• Model real-world scheduling constraints using OR-Tools CP-SAT, supporting multi-objective trade-offs
• Implement and hybridise metaheuristics (GA/LNS/SA) with CP-SAT where they improve performance
• Profile and optimise critical paths, pushing workloads to C++/Rust when needed
• Parallelise and distribute workloads; design reproducible experiments, configs, and KPIs
• Design stable JSON contracts and collaborate with the frontend (basic TypeScript reading)
• Ensure quality and reliability through unit + property testing, observability, and reproducible seeds
• Ship in production: containerise with Docker/Docker Compose, version with Git/GitHub

Qualifications

• Strong Python 3.x skills: typed, clean code (mypy/typing), with solid OOP/FP/ECS fundamentals
• Experience with C++ or Rust (or similar performance-focused language)
• Strong background in algorithms, data structures, and performance optimisation
• Practical experience modelling optimization problems
• Ability to implement metaheuristics from scratch in Python
• Familiarity with parallel/distributed computing
• Solid profiling, testing, and observability practices (unit + property testing, reproducible seeds)
• Experimentation discipline: reproducible runs, config management, metrics/KPI tracking
• API integration experience: JSON contracts, HTTP APIs, and basic TypeScript reading

Current Tech Stack

React, TypeScript, TanStack Router & Query, tRPC, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, Python (FastAPI), Docker, Kubernetes.

Your Opportunity

This is a chance to join as one of the first engineers and own the heart of our product. You'll design and implement algorithms that make factories more efficient and resilient. With high autonomy, you'll influence technical direction, scale performance, and see your work directly impact real-world operations. As Zentio grows, you'll grow with it, shaping not just the engine, but the company itself.

Your Profile

This is the perfect role for an experienced engineer who wants to join an early stage company that builds a high impact applied AI product

• You thrive in a small, fast-moving team and take full ownership of your work
• You love building from 0→1 and shipping products that solve real customer problems
• You bring 5+ years of experience in with optimization problems or algorithms
• You're fluent in written and spoken English
• You have a track record of impressive achievements, whether from past roles, side projects, or entrepreneurial ventures, and you're eager to keep learning and growing