Founding Engineer

<h3>About the Role</h3><p style="min-height:1.5em">This is a rare opportunity to join a small, high-conviction team building purpose-built AI agents for the sea and air freight industry. As a <strong>Founding Engineer</strong>, you will sit at the intersection of customer discovery, product strategy, and hands-on engineering. You'll help transition the product from demo-stage to a scalable, production-grade platform — and play a direct role in shaping the company's technical and strategic direction from the ground up.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">The company is an early-stage B2B SaaS startup in the freight and logistics technology space, developing an AI operating system that automates operational workflows — such as rate requests, bookings, and exception handling — for top-tier freight forwarders. The platform integrates with existing industry systems and continuously improves with every shipment processed.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Work arrangement:</strong> Hybrid — Berlin, Germany. Visa sponsorship is available.</p><h3>What You'll Do</h3><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Lead customer conversations, deeply understand user pain points, and translate insights into concrete product features and technical strategy.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Design, build, and ship full-stack applications across the entire product surface area.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Advance the product's AI capabilities — including LLM integrations, agent orchestration, and data pipelines.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Drive the transition from MVP and demo-mode to scalable, high-quality production systems.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Contribute to shaping product direction, engineering culture, and company strategy as an early team member.</p></li></ul><h3>What We're Looking For</h3><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Must-haves:</strong></p><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">2+ years of software engineering experience.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Full-stack development proficiency: <strong>Node.js, TypeScript, and React</strong> on the frontend/backend; <strong>Python</strong> for backend and ML-adjacent work.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Hands-on experience with <strong>LLM design patterns</strong>, vector stores, and model fine-tuning.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Proven track record designing, building, and deploying scalable products from MVP through production.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Comfort leading customer conversations and distilling feedback into clear product requirements.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience working in a startup or early-stage environment — you thrive with autonomy and ambiguity.</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Nice to have:</strong></p><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Familiarity with the freight forwarding or broader logistics technology space.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience integrating with enterprise systems (e.g. ERP, TMS, or carrier portals).</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Background at a high-calibre technology, consulting, or logistics-tech company.</p></li></ul><h3>Compensation &amp; Benefits</h3><p style="min-height:1.5em">Compensation details are not publicly listed for this role. Equity participation is expected given the founding-team nature of the position. Visa sponsorship is available for the right candidate.</p><h3>Location</h3><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Berlin, Germany</strong> — Hybrid working arrangement. Candidates should expect a regular in-person presence at the Berlin office.</p><p>Find <a href="https://www.arbeitnow.com">Jobs in Germany</a> on Arbeitnow</a>