Wanted: Q

The briefing

Every good service has an origin story. Ours starts with a broken promise.

The story of Fairlo began when our founders, Jimmy and Shamon, saw first-hand how unfair and predatory lending practices can trap people in cycles of debt. Their mother had been misled by a large bank, and instead of being offered a lifeline, she was pushed further into financial difficulties.

That injustice sparked something: to build a company that reimagines credit, rooted in transparency, flexibility and respect. That company became Fairlo.

Current operations

Since launching in 2018, Fairlo has grown to around 50,000 active customers, with a 4.7 Trustpilot rating from over 4,700 reviews. Proof that putting transparency, flexibility and people first isn't just the right thing to do. It's a winning model.

We're a tight team of 45 people based in Stockholm, Crete and the UK. Backed by some of Sweden's most experienced investors and driven by a culture that prizes kindness, courage, collaboration and common sense, we're very proud of what we've built so far.

The mission

Every operation needs a quartermaster. Fairlo is becoming a bank, and we're building it to be AI-driven from the ground up. We're bringing AI into everything we do, not just engineering: how we assess credit, how we run finance, how we serve customers, and how we work day to day. With today's AI tools, the distance between an idea and a working solution is shrinking fast, and the people closest to our customers and our business can increasingly shape and build solutions themselves.

We want to be early, not catch up later. That's why we're hiring AI Engineer #1. This is a new role, so there's no roadmap to inherit. You'll help write it. Based in our Stockholm office, you'll report directly to our CTO and work with every part of the company: finding where AI can make the biggest difference, building the tools that make it real, and creating the platform and guardrails that keep it safe in a regulated bank.

Your assignments

You'll build things people use every day, and you'll see the impact across the whole company. As our first AI engineer, you'll also shape how we work: how fast we try new things, and how we make sure they hold up. Others will follow your lead, so how you work matters as much as what you build. Your work will involve:

• Build the gadgets. Design and ship AI-powered tools and agents that change how colleagues work, from automating manual processes in operations to giving credit and finance teams answers in seconds instead of days. You'll own them from the first conversation with users through backend, integrations, deployment and iteration.
• Find the next mission. Sit down with teams across Fairlo, understand their work, and spot where AI can remove friction or open up something new. Then prototype fast, test with real users, and turn what works into something reliable.
• Keep the lab ahead. Try new models, tools and ways of working as they appear, decide quickly what's worth adopting, and bring what works into Fairlo safely.
• Run the lab on AWS. Own the foundation for how Fairlo uses AI, including Amazon Bedrock, approved AI tools, model access, logging, cost control and monitoring, so every new tool builds on solid ground.
• Wire the gadgets into headquarters, safely. Build integrations that give AI tools controlled, least-privilege access to our codebase, analytics and data, including MCP servers and internal APIs.
• Write the instruction manual. Create templates, self-serve environments and clear documentation so colleagues outside engineering can build and experiment on their own. The goal is a paved road where the safe path is also the easy one. Unlike certain famous agents, ours will actually read it.
• Build in the safety catch. Turn security, compliance and data-protection rules into automated checks in our CI/CD pipelines, so speed and safety go together.
• Train the field agents. Run workshops, coach colleagues, and share what works, so the whole company gets better at using AI.

Field requirements

We're looking for someone who is hungry, fast and knows what they're doing. You ship quickly, and what you ship is secure and built to last. We believe you:

• Have several years of backend engineering experience and love building complete products yourself, ideally in TypeScript / Node.js.
• Have owned systems in production end to end, including architecture, operations and incidents, and are comfortable making technical decisions independently.
• Keep pace with a field that changes every few months, and can show us something you built recently with tools that didn't exist a year ago.
• Move fast without cutting the corners that matter. You know when a quick prototype is the right call and when something needs to be built properly from day one.
• Have hands-on experience building with LLMs, for example through Amazon Bedrock, the Anthropic or OpenAI APIs, agents, tool calling or RAG.
• Have solid production experience with AWS, including IAM, networking and security, infrastructure as code (for example Terraform or CDK), and CI/CD, containers and monitoring.
• Think security-first and understand what it means to handle sensitive personal and financial data.
• Can take a vague problem from a colleague, turn it into something concrete, and drive it to done without needing a detailed spec.
• Enjoy working directly with non-technical colleagues, get energy from seeing others succeed with what you've built, and can explain technical topics simply.
• Are fluent in English, our working language.

Extra clearance

• Experience building internal tools, automation or AI agents used across a company.
• Experience building MCP servers or integrating AI with tools like Slack, GitLab or a data warehouse.
• Experience with AI evaluation or LLM observability tooling (for example Langfuse or LangSmith).
• Experience with policy as code or automated security and compliance checks in pipelines.
• Experience in a regulated environment such as banking or payments, or familiarity with ISO 27001, DORA or the EU AI Act.
• Experience with PostgreSQL and data platforms such as Snowflake.

Standard issue

Every Fairlo agent is issued with:

• Get creative freedom along with the opportunity to build excellent services, choosing architectural and technical frameworks.
• Be part of building the financial world you'd like to live in.
• Be part of a team that supports each other, has fun together and thrives.
• Work from our office in a top location in Stockholm.
• Get a competitive salary and benefits package.
• Have a hybrid working framework.
• Get a high-end laptop and equipment.
• Get 30 days of paid holidays per year on top of bank holidays.
• Have free sick days.
• Get private health insurance.
• Be part of our pension scheme.

Report for duty

Our agents sit in credit, finance and operations. They don't need to know how the gadget works. They need it to work every time, and to come back in one piece. You'll be the first in this post, and the way you work will shape how the rest of us work with AI. If you're hungry, fast and know what you're doing, we'd love to talk.

Your first assignment: when you apply, tell us about something you've built recently with AI that you're proud of.