Founding Engineer (Full-Stack/AI)

About the Role

We're an early-stage AI startup building technology that makes global freight forwarding operations autonomous — handling everything from quoting and booking to customs and invoice reconciliation. Backed by a top-tier accelerator and experienced founders, we're looking for a Founding Engineer (Full-Stack/AI) to join our small, high-ownership team on-site in Munich.

This is a rare opportunity to be a genuine DNA hire: you'll shape the technical architecture, own critical product areas end-to-end, and push the frontier of applied AI in a complex, data-rich industry. You'll work directly alongside the founding team and have meaningful equity participation.

What You'll Do

• Own, design, build, and maintain the most critical parts of the core product.

• Ship reliable full-stack features that make freight forwarding teams radically more efficient.

• Evaluate, benchmark, and fine-tune AI capabilities to maximise domain accuracy and contextual understanding.

• Continuously experiment with new model releases, frameworks, and agentic techniques in production.

• Ship promising approaches quickly and iterate based on data and user feedback.

• Navigate and improve large-scale, messy legacy codebases — adding structure and scalability.

• Engineer infrastructure and automation pipelines to support heavy data and AI workloads.

• Collaborate closely with founders and teammates as a hands-on, high-ownership contributor.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• Founder-level drive, adaptability, extreme ownership, and a results-oriented, autonomous work style.

• Strong full-stack engineering experience with the ability to move fluidly across backend and cloud environments.

• Fluency in Python; familiarity with Go is a strong plus.

• Practical, production experience with AI/ML systems: benchmarking, fine-tuning, integrating LLMs, and running live experiments.

• Comfort engineering for scale, automating systems, and working with complex legacy codebases.

• Strong CS fundamentals, intellectual humility, and exceptional self-discipline.

Nice to Have:

• 2–3+ years of professional software engineering experience (strong personal projects or an entrepreneurial track record are equally welcome).

• Startup or entrepreneurial background.

• Domain familiarity with logistics, freight forwarding, or supply chain technology.

Note: Visa sponsorship is not available for this role. Candidates must be authorised to work in Germany.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: €60,000 – €80,000 per year, depending on experience.

• Equity: Meaningful early-employee options package (up to ~1.5%).

• Direct impact on product direction and company trajectory from day one.

Location

This role is on-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany . We believe in the energy and speed of working together in person, especially at this stage. We're looking for candidates who are excited to be present and engaged in Munich.