Founding Engineer, NLP Systems and Infrastructure

About the Role

Join an early-stage AI and dual-use technology company as its first technical hire. You will turn a research-grade prototype into reliable production software for enterprise and public-sector users, with broad ownership and the opportunity to build an engineering team.

What You'll Do

• Architect production systems spanning orchestrated data and NLP pipelines, AI/ML integrations, CI/CD, observability, and cloud or on-premises deployment.

• Set and own the engineering roadmap, balancing delivery speed, quality, and security.

• Build and validate the first production release hands-on, including infrastructure and security decisions.

• Hire and lead an engineering team while setting technical direction, engineering standards, and a positive team culture.

• Work closely with company leadership and users to iterate on the product.

What We're Looking For

• At least 5 years building and operating production data-intensive or NLP systems, including ingestion, deduplication, entity resolution, queues, and orchestrated pipelines.

• Strong Python skills and production engineering practices, including automated testing, CI/CD, and monitoring for data and model drift.

• Experience with PostgreSQL and at least one graph database, vector store, or search engine, plus embeddings, vector search, and language model integrations.

• Experience managing language model costs, versioning, and non-deterministic behavior.

• Ability to build clean APIs and functional analyst-facing interfaces using React, Vue, or similar technologies.

• Experience owning production architecture, observability, and cloud and on-premises deployment options. Docker, Kubernetes, or Helm experience is useful.

• Open-web or platform data acquisition experience and awareness of related legal and ethical considerations are valued.

• Willingness and eligibility to obtain a security clearance in the near future. German language skills and early-stage startup experience are helpful.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: €60,000 to €120,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is available.

Location

On-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.