Founding Engineer

About the Role

Join a small, fast-moving energy software startup in Munich building an end-to-end platform for industrial battery storage — covering AI-driven operations, real-time optimization, and energy market trading. As a Founding Engineer , you'll own large parts of the core product, shape the technical architecture from the ground up, and have a direct impact on the company's trajectory. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role at the intersection of software engineering, optimization, and the European energy transition.

What You'll Do

• Own and build the backend services powering real-time optimization and forecasting for industrial energy assets.

• Develop and deploy mixed-integer optimization algorithms and predictive models that process data in real time.

• Build frontend dashboards in React/Next.js that allow battery operators to monitor, configure, and control assets.

• Design, scale, and operate cloud infrastructure supporting thousands of distributed battery systems.

• Set up and maintain observability, monitoring, and CI/CD pipelines for production services.

• Collaborate closely with the founding team to define product features and technical requirements.

• Iterate rapidly based on feedback from live production deployments.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• Experience with real-time data processing and optimization or forecasting systems.

• Solid background designing and operating scalable distributed backend systems (Python strongly preferred).

• Containerization and modern deployment practices — Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD for production services.

• Hands-on experience with observability and monitoring tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).

• Strong database design and data modeling skills (PostgreSQL/MySQL or similar).

• Frontend proficiency with JavaScript/TypeScript, React, and Tailwind CSS (Next.js a strong plus).

• Experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

• Prior startup experience — ideally at a company under 3 years old and fewer than 50 employees.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or Electrical Engineering (grade better than 2.0 on the German scale or equivalent).

Nice to Have:

• Experience in the energy industry (battery storage, grid management, energy markets, or similar).

• Production deployment of optimization or forecasting models.

• Fluency in German — most end customers operate in German-speaking markets.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: €70,000 – €100,000 per year, depending on experience.

• Meaningful equity participation as a founding-stage team member.

• Visa sponsorship available.

• Direct influence over product, architecture, and company direction from day one.

Location

This role is on-site in Munich, Germany . The team works together in the office day-to-day — no remote option at this stage.