Founding Engineer

About The Role An early-stage AI-native procurement SaaS startup based in Berlin is looking for a Founding Engineer to join its founding product team. You'll help build an AI-first platform that connects procurement and category managers to real-time supplier data and enterprise systems. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role: you'll shape the product, the architecture, and the engineering culture from the ground up — shipping daily and iterating directly with customers. This is an on-site role in Berlin. No visa sponsorship is available — candidates must be eligible to work in Germany without employer sponsorship. What You'll Do Own core product areas end-to-end, from AI agent orchestration to the interfaces that category managers use daily. Design reliable LLM workflows with evaluation loops, guardrails, and observability that hold up in production. Build real-time supplier data pipelines, normalization layers, and integrations with enterprise ERP systems. Ship to production continuously and collaborate directly with customers to iterate based on real feedback. Make architectural decisions across the full stack, balancing performance, security, and developer experience. Define engineering culture, tooling, and processes as the team grows. Contribute to the product roadmap and work closely with founders on major technical decisions. Mentor teammates and grow into an engineering leadership path as the company scales. What We're Looking For Required skills & experience: Strong full-stack foundation with attention to both interfaces and back-ends, and the seam between them. Proficiency in TypeScript (front-end and back-end) and Python; experience with Next.js and modern APIs. Hands-on experience building SaaS products end-to-end in a startup environment. Hands-on experience with LLMs, retrieval, and embeddings, including trade-off reasoning around latency, cost, and quality. Proven ability to design and operate production-grade AI/ML workflows with monitoring and safety guardrails. Experience building data pipelines, normalization, and integrations with enterprise systems. Domain knowledge in ERP, procurement, or related enterprise software. Strong written and verbal communication skills; comfortable working directly with customers and cross-functional teams. Ownership mindset — thrives in ambiguity, defines what to build as well as how to build it, and defaults to shipping and learning fast. Nice to have: Specific experience in procurement technology or supply chain platforms. Background in founding-team or seed-stage environments. Location Berlin, Germany — on-siteVisa sponsorship is not available; applicants must have existing eligibility to work in Germany.