Founders Associate

Founders' Associate Be the right hand to the founders of an enterprise AI consultancy. Build the commercial and operational foundations of the company, and test the ideas that grow it. This is a broad, hands-on role for someone early in their career who wants to learn how a company is actually run, by running it alongside the people who own it. You will work directly with Duncan and JD, our founders, on everything from how we find and win clients to how the company operates day to day. If you want to start something of your own one day and want to see the inside of a company first, this is the role for you. About Barnacle Labs Barnacle Labs is an enterprise AI engineering consultancy in Covent Garden. We develop our own core IP and use it to accelerate the deployment of complex production AI systems into companies like BT, Phoenix Group and the US Government's National Cancer Institute. Our founders were part of the European leadership team at IBM Watson, one of the first AIs to create real value for its users. Duncan Anderson was its European CTO and JD Wuarin a senior engineer. The first two core IP assets being built at Barnacle Labs are the basis for the Barnacle OS:

• Alexandria: our knowledge-graph-based agent-memory framework. Read more here: https://www.barnacle.ai/services/what-agents-know
• Journey: our workflow management system for the age of agents. Think long-horizon tasks that work with any LLM (or SLM). Until now, most of our work has come through the founders' network. The next stage is building repeatable channels we can scale. The role The job has three parts. Build the foundations of our operations. You will help the founders and the team define and run our core processes, including the sales pipeline, content, making things run smoothly internally across the team, and how we keep our partners warm. Test ideas for growth. Alongside the repeatable work, we run a steady stream of experiments to find new ways of winning clients and growing Barnacle. You will own that backlog, argue for what should run, run it, measure it and track the learnings systematically. Be the founders' right hand to Duncan and JD, across client facing work, internal processes and growth experiments. What a week looks like Your week splits in two. The repeatable work. The processes that have to run every week: the pipeline is up to date, follow-ups are sent, content goes out, partners hear from us. You keep this running and make it better. The experiments. Every week we pick a small number of ideas to test: an executive dinner, a speaking slot, an outreach campaign, a report. You run them, measure them, and report back on what we learned and what to do next. These link to objectives we care about and that you own. Your first month will include meeting the team and getting up to speed on our processes and how we work. We run a structured process for this, and follow this from Core & Explore (see here: https://coreexplore.net/docs/getting-started/core-explore-in-5-minutes). Where this goes The role grows with the company. From here, chief of staff, head of operations or first commercial lead are all open, depending on where you want to be and where the company goes. Who you are What matters
• You want to start a company one day and want first-hand experience alongside fast-moving founders to help you get there.
• Hungry to work hard. You know results come from going above and beyond, and you want to prove to yourself and others that you are excellent.
• You do not wait to be told what to do. You work out what is needed, think from first principles, propose it, and make it happen.
• Goal oriented. You know what you are trying to achieve and you measure yourself on it.
• A systems thinker. You see how the parts connect and fix the cause, not the symptom.
• Comfortable getting your hands dirty, and comfortable hacking around a problem to get it done.
• Fluent with AI and automation.
• Passionate about how AI is evolving and the impact it is having on business and systems, and you want to be part of it.
• You think in priorities and from first principles.
• You communicate clearly and you work well in ambiguity. Nice to have
• You have built B2B growth funnels from nothing, and can show what it produced.
• Technical experience with knowledge graphs, AI memory systems or agent workflows.
• Time in a startup or a small team (Stage 0-1) What does not matter
• Years of experience.
• A business or marketing degree.
• A technical background. Engineers do well here, but so do people who have never written a line of code. What you get
• Direct access to two founders who have built and implemented complex AI systems for over a decade in enterprise.
• Real ownership and autonomy on the work you do from week one.
• Equity in the company you are helping to build.
• The skills, the network and the reference to start your own thing. Details
• Our office is in Covent Garden. Four days a week in the office.
• Competitive salary and equity.
• 25 days holiday. Unlimited paid sick days.
• Preferred start date: November 2026.
• You must have the right to work in the UK.
• Trained and mentored directly by the founders. Qualifications
• Degree-level education. The process Apply through the form. Application reviewed and interview set up, if successful. First interview with JD. Second interview with Duncan. A day in the office with a task. A simulation of how we work and the projects you would run. Final interview and offer. More info on the founders
• Duncan Anderson - co-founder. Former European CTO of IBM Watson. He has been building AI systems hands-on for over a decade, and still does. He has been featured in Wired and interviewed on Channel 4 on what AI can and cannot do.
• JD Wuarin - co-founder. Engineer (MS, Columbia; BA Economics, St Gallen). A senior engineer in Duncan's IBM Watson team, where he built open-source projects that scaled into production. He leads research at Barnacle, including the work behind Alexandria. How to apply Apply through the form.