Founding Engineer

About the Role

This is a founding-level engineering role at an early-stage AI startup building purpose-built automation tools for the freight forwarding industry. You will sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and customer success, helping shape the company's direction from the ground up and owning the journey from early demos to production-grade systems.

What You'll Do

• Lead direct customer conversations and translate feedback into concrete product features and technical strategy.
• Design, build, and ship full-stack applications across the frontend and backend while pushing the AI capabilities of the product forward.
• Drive the transition from prototype and demo-stage software to scalable, high-quality production systems.
• Help define the product roadmap, technical architecture, and overall company direction as a founding team member.

What We're Looking For

• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience building and shipping production applications.
• Full-stack development proficiency: Node.js, TypeScript, and React on the frontend; Python on the backend.
• Hands-on experience with LLM design patterns, vector stores, and model fine-tuning.
• Experience with vector databases or semantic search implementations is a plus.
• Holistic product-engineering breadth rather than a profile concentrated primarily in ML, data, frontend, or analytics.
• Experience designing and deploying scalable products from MVP through to production.
• Comfort leading customer conversations and shaping product requirements from real-world feedback.
• Background in startup or early-stage environments, with the ability to make pragmatic architecture trade-offs without over-engineering.
• Willingness to work hybrid from Berlin or to relocate there.

Location

Hybrid, based in Berlin, Germany. Visa sponsorship is available.