Co-Founder & CTO | AI & ML Startup

Founders Factory; Berlin; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Co-founder equity stake

Ownership of technology

Early access to field data

Spin-out funding path

Support from Founders Factory network

Real-world impact

Job summary

Founders Factory is seeking a hand-on Co-founder & CTO to build the technology and product that scales the company. You will own the end-to-end technology, turn the MVP into a production-grade product used by field technicians, and lead AI workflows and integrations with customer systems.

You will guide the ML core, design a learning engine, and shape the product with feedback from technicians. A true co-founder role with equity and strategic influence awaits in Berlin.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in a quantitative field.
• 3+ years of production ML experience.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with ownership and bias for action.
• Experience leading the technical build of a product from zero to one.
• Strong hands-on software engineering across backend and cloud.

Responsibilities

• Own the technology end to end: architecture, roadmap, build-vs-buy decisions, reliability and security.
• Take the MVP to a production-grade product used daily by technicians in the field.
• Build reliable AI workflows and repeatable integrations into customer systems.
• Continuously improve the ML core: retrieval, multimodal input and diagnostic reasoning.
• Design and build the learning engine that makes the product smarter with every visit.
• Set up evaluation, safety and monitoring: benchmark cases and testing.
• Build a state-of-the-art UX/UI that technicians want to use daily.
• Spend time with technicians in the field and iterate quickly from feedback.
• Recruit and lead the engineering team as we scale.
• Shape the company strategy and investor conversations with the founding team.

Skills

Machine Learning in production

Entrepreneurial mindset

Technical leadership

Backend development

German language fluency

Education

Master’s degree in CS/ML/AI/Math/Physics/EE

Tools

Microsoft Azure

Job description

About us

Expertise is the bottleneck in technical field service. We are building the AI that makes it scale – and learns from every visit, from every job.

• Stealth-mode AI venture building a copilot that guides technicians at every job like an experienced master craftsman – before, during and after every job

• Built in the field, not behind closed doors: our product is developed with direct access to thousands of technicians with a leading European real estate industry partner – every feature is tested on real jobs, with results in days instead of months

• Backed by Founders Factory; founding team in Berlin, MVP built and tested with technicians, now heading towards spin‑out and first funding

• Vision: Europe’s leading field service intelligence layer.

The role

We have built and tested our MVP. Now we are looking for a hand‑on Co­Founder & CTO who builds the technology and product that grows and scales the company.

What you will do

• Own the technology end to end: architecture, roadmap, build-vs-buy decisions, reliability and security

• Take the tested MVP to a production‑grade product used daily by technicians in the field

• Build reliable AI workflows and repeatable integrations into customer systems such as work orders and asset data

• Continuously improve the Machine Learning core: retrieval over manufacturer and expert knowledge, multimodal input (photo, voice) and diagnostic reasoning

• Design and build the learning engine that makes the product smarter with every visit: capturing, reviewing, evaluating and reusing confirmed outcomes – the core of our knowledge moat

• Set up evaluation, safety and monitoring: expert‑reviewed benchmark cases, grounding, escalation and regression testing

• Build a state‑of‑the‑art UX/UI that technicians want to use every day

• Spend time with technicians in the field and turn their feedback into product within days

• Recruit and lead the engineering team as we scale

• Shape the company as a co‑founder: strategy, culture and investor conversations alongside the founding team

What you bring

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning/AI, Data Science, Mathematics, Physics, Electrical Engineering or a related quantitative field

• Machine Learning experience, ideally 3+ years applying it in production products (e.g. LLMs, retrieval/RAG, NLP, computer vision, model evaluation)

• Entrepreneurial mindset: you want to build a company, not just a product – full ownership, bias for action and comfort with ambiguity

• Experience leading the technical build of a product from zero to one, e.g. as tech lead or founding engineer

• Strong hands‑on software engineering across backend, APIs, data pipelines and cloud – you still build and ship yourself

• Sound technical judgement: you know the limits of LLMs, how to test them and when not to use them

• Product empathy: you enjoy learning from users in the field and making complex work simple

• Fluent German and English – German is needed for working with technicians and technical source material

Nice to have

• PhD in Machine Learning, NLP, Computer Vision, Information Retrieval or a related field

• Previous founder or early‑stage startup experience

• Experience with Microsoft Azure and enterprise B2B requirements (security, GDPR, multi‑tenant SaaS)

• Background in field service, industrial, maintenance or proptech software

• Experience with multimodal AI, voice interfaces or decision‑support systems

• Experience hiring and leading engineering teams

What we offer

• Competitive compensation package, including a meaningful co‑founder equity stake

• A true co‑founder role with ownership of the technology and a real say in the direction of the company

• An unfair head start: a cooperating partner with thousands of technicians and real repair data from day one – the fuel for a system that learns from every job

• A tested MVP and a clear path to spin‑out and funding

• Support from Founders Factory’s network across tech, design and growth

• A mission with real‑world impact: helping close the skilled‑trades gap in Europe

Location & start

• Berlin / hybrid, flexible

• Full‑time; start as soon as possible