---
title: 'Technical Ex-Founder at Slingshot AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/technical-ex-founder-slingshot-ai-london-bwma1f7fn1zg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Technical Ex-Founder at Slingshot AI

- **Company:** Slingshot AI
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Compensation:** £100k–£250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-05-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/slingshotai/60280688-8044-4103-a822-aba6d83b79eb

## Job description

Slingshot AI

Slingshot AI is the team behind Ash, the first AI designed for mental health. Our mission is to make support more accessible and help people change their lives in the ways they want.

We’re building a world-class team by empowering individuals with the autonomy, flexibility, and support they need to do their best work. We dream big, iterate fast, and care deeply. If that sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you.

Our team spans machine learning, product, engineering, conversational design, clinical, growth, and operations, with offices in both New York City and London.

We're a well-funded Series A company, having raised $93M from Andreessen Horowitz, Radical Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, plus top-tier tech investors involved in ElevenLabs, Captions, Shopify, Plaid, Notion, Canva, Twitch, Airtable, and many others.

## THE ROLE

We're looking for Technical Ex-Founders to join our Engineering team. If you wrote your company's early code, operated it through real user growth, and miss building and shipping more than you miss anything else about the founder job, this role is for you.

Engineers who've founded or been the early technical leader at a startup tend to thrive at Slingshot because they get to work autonomously and own a large set of problems. They're product-minded owners by default, comfortable defining a problem, talking to users, building a solution, and iterating. We'll always have a place for smart and motivated technical people who have built and scaled something interesting.

Our tech stack uses Kotlin for core backend services, Python for our ML work, Dart/Flutter for the app, Next.js/TypeScript for internal tooling, as well as Rust for low level media streaming. We use gRPC and GCP (Kubernetes, Cloud Run) as our primary cloud provider. You're not required to be an expert in all of these tools, but we would like you to come with a learning mindset and to not be afraid of getting your hands dirty with whatever tool the job might require.

## WHAT WE LOOK FOR

- You founded or were the early technical lead at a startup, wrote a meaningful share of the production code yourself, and operated it through meaningful user growth.
- 6+ years of (recent) hands-on engineering experience, with opinions on trade-offs and quality formed by having to live with your own decisions in production.
- Comfortable building inside AI/ML codebases. We don't need you to be an ML Engineer, but having an interest in AI helps!

If this sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you. A short note about what you built last, what you'd want to build next, and links to anything you've shipped (projects, repos, writing) is more useful to us than a polished CV.

What we offer:

- A chance to join a passionate tight-knit team working on something to change the world
- Competitive compensation (top of personal market)
- Travel between our NYC / London offices
- Usual startup perks like free lunch and coffee in office + generous learning budget
- We cover your personal therapy

## About Slingshot AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Slingshot AI is an AI research lab building the first foundation model for psychology, powering its consumer product "Ash," an AI designed for mental health support.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Daniel Cahn and Neil Parikh

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Mental Health AI, Wellness and Fitness Services
- Target customers: B2C (individuals seeking mental health support) and B2B (organizations needing AI-assisted crisis text response and AI counseling)
- Mission or purpose statement: "To make mental healthcare more accessible and help people change their lives in the ways they want."

## Products & Services
- **[Ash]**: The first AI designed for mental health. A consumer-facing product that functions as a conversational AI therapist, built on Slingshot’s proprietary foundation model for psychology. It focuses on increasing user autonomy, competence, and relatedness, integrating approaches like CBT, DBT, ACT, gestalt, and psychodynamic therapy.
- **[Foundation Model for Psychology]**: A task-specific generative model trained on large-scale psychological data, designed to respect individual value systems and cultural norms, powering both Ash and B2B use cases like AI-assisted crisis text response.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $136M (across multiple rounds including seed and Series A)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Radical Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Felicis (led seed round), plus top-tier tech investors involved in ElevenLabs, Captions, Shopify, Plaid, Notion, Canva, Twitch, and Airtable. Also partnered with One Mind Accelerator.
- **Growth Signals**: 25,000+ beta testers (including many therapists); 50,000+ people have tested Ash; 80% headcount growth year-over-year (34 employees currently, up from ~16); offices in both New York City and London; active job postings up 33% year-over-year.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unique foundation model for psychology**: Unlike general-purpose AI assistants, Slingshot’s model is purpose-built for mental health, integrating multiple therapeutic approaches (CBT, DBT, ACT, psychodynamic, gestalt) rather than a single "cure-all."
- **Strong clinical and ethical foundation**: The team includes a Clinical R&D Lead (Dr. Derrick Hull, formerly of Talkspace) and a Head of Safety (Mark Ungless), ensuring the product is built with clinical rigor and safety.
- **Respect for autonomy**: The AI is explicitly designed not to create dependency; it aims to increase the user’s sense of control and connection, differentiating it from other AI assistants.
- **Top-tier investor backing**: Backed by a16z and Radical Ventures, signaling strong confidence in the team and mission.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling access to mental health support globally by continuing to train and improve their foundation model.
- Expanding the user base of Ash (currently free) and proving its efficacy at scale.
- Building a world-class team across ML, product, engineering, conversational design, clinical, growth, and operations in both New York and London.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: "Every action we take helps a real person, in the real world." The company is deeply focused on making a tangible impact on mental health.
- **Culture**: Values include "celebrate divergence and value authenticity," "move fast and embrace the unknown," "treat each other like adults," and "always in search of truth." Emphasis on autonomy, ownership, and fast iteration.
- **Work model**: In-office (employees work from physical offices in NYC or London). Offices are described as collaborative spaces with meals and drinks provided.
- **Perks**: Competitive salary, significant equity, unlimited holiday, L&D budget (courses/books/conferences), therapy coverage, private health insurance, company off-sites, office meals and drinks.
- **Team**: Small but growing fast (34 people, +80% YoY). Team spans multiple countries (US, UK, Canada) and departments (technical, product, design, clinical, operations). High ownership and impact for early employees.

## Sources
1. [slingshotai.com](https://slingshotai.com/)
2. [slingshotai.com/careers](https://slingshotai.com/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/slingshotai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/slingshotai)
4. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/slingshot-6)
5. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/slingshot-ai)

## Other roles at Slingshot AI

- [Product Psychologist](https://feeny.ai/job/product-psychologist-slingshot-ai-london-2khyn4yrt2zn) — London, United Kingdom
- [Head of Creative - Paid Social](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-creative-paid-social-slingshot-ai-london-e3qrh0nhp7jm) — London, United Kingdom
- [Creative Lead, Paid Social](https://feeny.ai/job/creative-lead-paid-social-slingshot-ai-london-4fc6evexwrwm) — London, United Kingdom
- [Creative Strategy Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/creative-strategy-lead-slingshot-ai-london-6gdchj3g3n5k) — London, United Kingdom
- [Social & Creator Intern (Science Communication)](https://feeny.ai/job/social-creator-intern-science-communication-slingshot-ai-london-fmh7bb1n8wbn) — London, United Kingdom
- [Postdoctoral Clinical Research Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/postdoctoral-clinical-research-scientist-slingshot-ai-new-york-bnx7y52nhj90) — New York, NY
- [Chief of Staff, GTM](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-of-staff-gtm-slingshot-ai-new-york-t3edqnq4qx9t) — New York, NY
- [Member of Technical Staff, Mobile](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-mobile-slingshot-ai-london-xq0xh7mqg6sv) — London, United Kingdom