EARLY CAREERS · CN SOLAR LABS

Your first job here pays what everyone else's does.

Four ways in: an internship, a graduate founding role, a research residency, or an apprenticeship with no degree required. All of them are paid on the same £150,000 floor as the rest of the group, all of them put something of yours in production inside a fortnight, and none of them have a closing date.

Why we invest here at all

Most early-careers programmes are a recruiting expense dressed as generosity. The work is invented, the pay is a fraction of the real thing, and the arrangement is honest about neither. We run this differently for a reason that is not primarily charitable: at eight people, the person who joins with three years of habits from somewhere else costs us more to unteach than the person who arrives with none.

The problems here sit between disciplines and the accepted answer is frequently wrong, which means the useful trait is not experience but the willingness to say “why is it done that way?” and then go and find out. That question gets asked most freely by people who have not yet been trained out of asking it. So we pay properly, hand over something real, and put someone experienced close enough to catch the falls.

Paying someone less than the work is worth because they are new is simply a slower way of asking them to leave.

Figure 1: A conventional early-career pay ladder against a flat floor. The usual shape asks you to spend three years climbing back to the standard rate.

PAY

£150k floor

The same floor as the whole group. Interns pro-rata against the same number. No graduate band, no stipend.

DEGREE

Not required

No qualification is a condition of any route on this page, and we have not written a minimum into one.

APPLICATIONS

Open all year

Rolling intake, no cohort, no deadline to miss. Apply early and we will talk to you early.

AFTERWARDS

Return offer

Ship the work to standard and the full-time offer is yours. A commitment, not a hope.

Four ways in

Pick the one that fits, or tell us none of them do. Every route is open to undergraduates and master’s students, doctoral candidates and postdocs, people with no degree at all, and people whose first career was something else entirely.

Figure 2: Six starting points, four routes, one destination. Including the two routes that require no degree at all.

Internship

Undergraduates and master's students, any year

10 TO 12 WEEKS · PAID AT THE £150,000 FLOOR, PRO-RATA · ROLLING

One surface, one problem that was on the roadmap before you arrived, and something in production by the end of the second week. We do not keep a drawer of practice projects for interns, because a problem nobody needs solved teaches you nothing and everybody in the room knows it is make-work.

▸No prior internship required, and no expectation that you have done this before
▸One thing you made that you can talk about for twenty minutes without getting bored

Graduate founding role

Final-year students and recent graduates

FULL-TIME · £150,000 FLOOR, SAME AS EVERYONE · ROLLING

Founding rather than junior, and the distinction is not cosmetic. You get a surface with your name against it, a customer whose problem it is, and the same direct line to the founder as somebody twenty years in. The title does not have a number after it because we do not run a ladder for you to climb.

▸You would rather own something small and real than assist on something large and abstract
▸Evidence you finish things, which is rarer than evidence you can start them

Research residency

Doctoral candidates and postdocs

6 TO 12 MONTHS · £150,000 FLOOR · PUBLICATION RIGHTS RETAINED

A residency on RACD or the Consensus corpus, on a question we genuinely do not have the answer to. You keep the right to publish, your name goes on the paper, and if the result is negative we would still rather know. This is the most direct route into the research ventures, which are the most important thing this group does.

▸A thesis, a preprint or a result you can defend against someone trying hard to break it
▸Willingness to have the work meet a production system, and to care when it does not survive contact

Apprenticeship

School leavers, self-taught, bootcamp, dropped out, changing career entirely

MULTI-YEAR · £150,000 FLOOR FROM DAY ONE · NO DEGREE REQUIRED

A paid, multi-year route for people who never went to university, left before finishing, or spent a first career doing something else completely. Teaching, medicine, logistics, the trades: the people who have already been responsible for something real tend to be unusually good at this work. If you want the degree afterwards, we will fund it.

▸No degree, no certificate and no permission slip required. We will read what you built
▸A reason to believe you learn fast without anyone standing over you

What we actually put in

Investing heavily in early careers is a claim anyone can make on a page like this, so here is the specific version, itemised, in the order that matters.

Paid on the same floor as everyone else

One hundred and fifty thousand pounds is the floor for the whole group, and early careers is not carved out of it. Interns are paid pro-rata against the same number. There is no separate graduate band, no stipend, and no discount for being new, because paying someone less than the work is worth is simply a way of asking them to leave.

A named mentor, and the founder reads your work

One person whose job includes you, not a rota. Beyond that, the review that matters happens with whoever read the code, and the founder is in those reviews. Nobody here is managed by proxy, and that does not change because it is your first job.

A real surface, in the first fortnight

Something that ships, that customers touch, and that has your name against it in the decision log. The fastest way to become good at this is to be responsible for something while somebody experienced watches closely enough to catch you.

A look at a second venture, if you want one

You are on one venture at a time, the same as everyone else. Early on we will offer you a stretch inside another one, because a research question and a partner engagement demand different instincts and most people cannot tell from the outside which they are built for. It is an offer and never an instruction. Decline it and stay where you are, and nothing follows from that.

Education, fully funded

A taught master's alongside the job, with the hours to actually do it. A doctorate sponsored in partnership with the research ventures, where the work counts for both. Courses, professional exams, certifications and summer schools. And if you left a degree unfinished, we will fund you finishing it.

Everything else, at full rate

The monthly group meetups, the required funded trip abroad, conferences, the food allowance, co-working, health cover, the equipment budget. There is no junior tier of the benefits, because a tiered version of looking after people is not looking after people.

The full list of what everyone in the group gets, from the monthly meetups to the funded trip abroad, is on the main careers page. None of it is tiered by seniority.

Your first ninety days

Figure 3: The first ninety days. Production inside a fortnight, ownership by day forty-five, and a review in writing.

DAYS 1–14

Something of yours is in production

A small, real change, shipped, reviewed by the person who will keep working with you. We would rather you break something recoverable in week one than read documentation for a month.

DAYS 15–45

You own the surface

The training wheels come off deliberately and on a stated date. You are asked what you think should happen before anyone tells you what will, and your mentor is close enough to catch a decision going wrong.

DAYS 46–75

A second venture, if you take it up

An offered stretch inside another company in the group, so that any later choice is informed by having done both rather than by having read about one. Entirely optional, and staying put is a perfectly good answer.

DAYS 76–90

A written, honest review

What you are good at, what is not working, and what we will do about the second one. Written down, so that it survives the conversation and you can hold us to it.

What we read when there is no track record

A first application has no employment history to hide behind, which is an advantage rather than a problem, because it forces the conversation onto the thing you made. A game, a mod, a bot, a preprint, a scraper, a spreadsheet that ran a business, a society you organised, a shop you ran at sixteen. It does not have to be sophisticated and it certainly does not have to be finished.

What we are reading for is the same in every case: did you keep going when it got boring, do you know what broke and why, and can you say what you would do differently now. A modest project you understand completely beats an impressive one you cannot account for, and we will find out which it is within about ten minutes, so send the honest one.

We do not ask for a cover letter written in the voice of somebody else, we do not screen on university, and there is no leetcode. The process is the same four steps as every other role: a conversation, one real problem drawn from work we are genuinely doing and paid if it runs long, a working session on your solution, and a decision within a week with the actual reason.

Questions we are asked

Do I need a degree?

No. The apprenticeship route exists specifically for people who do not have one and are not planning to get one. Nothing on this page requires a qualification, and we have deliberately not written a minimum into any of it.

Do I need to have done an internship before?

No, and we are aware that requiring prior experience for an entry-level role is how a field quietly stays closed. What we read first is something you made.

When do applications close?

They do not. Intake is rolling all year, with no cohort deadline and no window to miss. If you are early, we will talk to you early.

What happens at the end of an internship or residency?

If you ship the work to standard, you have a full-time offer. That is a commitment rather than a hope. If it is not working, you will hear that early and directly, with the actual reason, rather than at the end.

Will I be moved around between the ventures?

No. You work on one venture at a time, and only you can start a move. When another has capacity you can ask for it, but nobody is reassigned to fill a gap and nobody is told on a Monday that they are on something else now. Any stretch into a second venture is an offer you are free to decline.

Can you sponsor a visa?

In a lot of places, yes, and the early-career routes are sponsored on exactly the same basis as everything else. We sponsor without qualification across the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and EEA, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman. China, Taiwan, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and South Africa need confirming with us first. Anywhere else is hard, and we will tell you that early rather than at the end.

I am changing career and I am not twenty-two. Is this for me?

Yes. Early careers here means early in this career, not early in life. People who have already been responsible for something real elsewhere tend to arrive with judgement that is very hard to teach.

Apply

Name the route, or say you are not sure which one you are. Link the thing you made. Every application is read by a person, there is no deadline, and a no comes with the reason attached.