Staff Engineer – Founding Role in AI SaaS Startup

About the role

This is a founding Staff Engineer position at a seed‑stage AI SaaS startup that automates quote and order processing for distributors and manufacturers. You will be the technical backbone of a small, fast‑moving engineering team, owning high‑leverage systems across multiple products.

Key responsibilities

• Own the most complex and highest‑leverage engineering work, including core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure.
• Define and evolve architecture decisions across products to avoid long‑term technical dead‑ends.
• Spend the majority of time writing and shipping production code, leading by example.
• Eliminate technical debt by refactoring abstractions and raising reliability standards.
• Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and direct feedback.
• Contribute to AI capabilities, including LLM pipelines and data infrastructure.

Required profile

• 8+ years of software engineering experience solving hard production problems.
• Deep full‑stack expertise with strong backend, API, and infrastructure skills; comfortable on the frontend when needed.
• Proven ownership of architecture across multiple products, improving performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Fluency with cloud and DevOps: containerisation (Docker), major cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP), and infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform).
• Hands‑on technical leadership style, mentoring through doing rather than management alone.
• Experience building or integrating AI systems, LLMs, or large‑scale data pipelines is a strong plus.
• Comfortable working in a high‑intensity, in‑person startup environment.

Required skills

• Python
• React
• TypeScript
• Docker
• Azure
• AWS
• GCP
• Terraform

What we offer

• Salary range: 80,000 – 130,000 EUR annually.
• On‑site work in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
• Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.