Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer | AI-Native Startup | Cologne (Hybrid) Location: Cologne (Hybrid) Package: Highly Competitive + Equity AI Futures has been exclusively retained to appoint a Founding Engineer for an exciting AI-native startup based in Cologne. This is a rare opportunity to join at an early stage and help build both the product and the company. Working directly with the founders, you'll have significant influence over technical decisions, product direction and engineering culture while developing AI-powered software from the ground up. If you're motivated by ownership, autonomy and solving complex technical challenges, this is the opportunity to make a genuine impact. The Role As a Founding Engineer, you'll play a key role in shaping the company's technology and engineering function from day one. You'll work across the full product lifecycle, from designing architecture and developing new features to collaborating with customers and helping establish engineering best practices as the business grows. Key Responsibilities Design, build and deploy AI-powered products from concept to production.Work closely with the founders to define technical strategy and product direction.Take ownership of architecture, software development and platform scalability.Build production-grade applications using modern AI technologies.Collaborate directly with customers to understand problems and deliver practical solutions.Help establish engineering standards, processes and culture as the company grows.Contribute across the full software development lifecycle in a fast-paced startup environment. About You Strong commercial experience in Software Engineering, AI Engineering or Product Engineering.Excellent software engineering skills, ideally with Python and modern cloud technologies.Experience working with Generative AI, LLMs or AI-powered applications is highly desirable.Comfortable taking ownership across backend, infrastructure and product development.Entrepreneurial mindset with a passion for building products from the ground up.Previous startup, scale-up or founding experience is highly beneficial.Strong communication skills and the ability to thrive in a collaborative, fast-moving environment. Desirable Experience Building AI products for production environments.Agentic AI, RAG or LLM-based applications.Cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or GCP.Docker, Kubernetes and modern DevOps practices.Product-focused engineering with direct customer interaction. Why Join? Become one of the first technical hires in an AI-native startup.Work directly with experienced founders and influence the company's direction.Build products from zero to production with genuine technical ownership.Opportunity to shape engineering culture and future hiring.Equity alongside a highly competitive package.Join at a pivotal stage of growth with significant long-term potential. If you're excited by the opportunity to build something from the ground up and want to play a defining role in the success of an AI startup, we'd love to hear from you. AI Futures Ltd | Filling the AI Skills Gap®