Staff Engineer (Founding)
This role is on-site in Munich, Germany. Candidates must be willing to relocate to or already be based in Munich. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Founding Staff Engineer role in Munich, on-site, with 8+ years experience, full-stack focus, AI/LLM involvement, no visa sponsorship, equity upside.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are a fast-growing, early-stage B2B SaaS company automating inside sales workflows — quoting, order processing, and customer request handling — for distributors and manufacturers using AI. Our platform integrates deeply with enterprise ERP and CRM systems, and our AI capabilities span specification parsing, voice agents, and email automation.
We're hiring a Founding Staff Engineer to serve as the technical backbone of our engineering organization. This is a high-ownership, hands-on role for someone who thrives at the intersection of deep technical craft, cross-product architecture, and team mentorship. You'll set the bar for quality, reliability, and engineering standards across the organization — and you'll do it primarily by writing and shipping production code.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Act as the technical anchor across multiple products and development streams, owning the highest-leverage engineering work.
- Design and evolve architecture decisions — core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure — that prevent long-term dead-ends.
- Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping production code, leading by example.
- Identify and eliminate technical debt through thoughtful refactoring and by raising engineering standards.
- Mentor engineers via code review, pairing, and direct feedback to improve overall team output and reduce hidden risk.
- Contribute to the architecture and implementation of AI capabilities, including LLM pipelines and data infrastructure.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience with a proven track record of solving genuinely hard problems in production systems.
- Deep full-stack expertise with a strong focus on backend, APIs, and infrastructure; comfortable on the frontend when needed (Python, React, TypeScript).
- Demonstrated experience designing and evolving systems across multiple products and teams, including long-term architecture strategy.
- Experience contributing to AI capabilities, including design and implementation of LLM pipelines and data infrastructure.
- Cloud and DevOps fluency: containerization (Docker), cloud platforms (Azure / AWS / GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform).
Nice to Have
- Experience building or integrating large-scale AI systems or data pipelines beyond LLM integration.
- Background in enterprise SaaS, ERP/CRM integrations, or distribution and manufacturing software.
Who You Are
- A technical leader who leads through doing — you multiply team effectiveness without moving to a management track.
- You notice and fix slipping quality without being asked; deep ownership is your default mode.
- Mission-driven, pragmatic, and decisive under uncertainty.
- Willing to work on-site in Munich with a high level of intensity and commitment.
LOCATION
This role is on-site in Munich, Germany. Candidates must be willing to relocate to or already be based in Munich. Visa sponsorship is not available.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Compensation details were not provided for this role. Our team is small and equity upside is meaningful — this is an early, founding-level position with significant long-term ownership potential.