CTO & Co-Founder @ Pre-Seed AI Infrastructure Venture, Berlin

atlantic.vc; Berlin; On-site; EUR 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

ATLANTIC.VC is seeking a CTO & Co-Founder to shape technology, scale the product and build the engineering organisation from day one in our Berlin office.

You will lead a small team of engineers, own the technical roadmap, design scalable AI infrastructure, and drive architecture decisions while staying hands-on with code and influencing investor discussions.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading engineering teams, ideally in startups or as a CTO/VP Eng.
• Strong backend and platform foundations with distributed systems expertise.
• Hands-on experience building and operating AI infrastructure and LLM-powered systems.
• Extensive daily use of coding agents with ability to review and own output quality.
• Experience designing agentic engineering workflows and multi-agent orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the existing team of engineers, set high standards and ship ownership.
• Own technical hiring and grow the engineering organisation as the company scales.
• Set technical direction from architecture to roadmap and build-vs-buy decisions.
• Scale and operate reliable AI infrastructure, including APIs, cloud infrastructure and security
• Stay hands-on, write code and contribute to core systems.
• Build an AI-native engineering culture around coding agents and orchestration.
• Design and improve agentic workflows, harnesses, and multi-agent benchmarking.
• Represent the company technically with customers, in security reviews, and with investors.

Skills

Leadership

Hiring

Engineering management

Backend

Distributed systems

API design

Cloud infrastructure

Production systems

AI infrastructure

LLM integration

Code review

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Claude Code

OpenAI tools

Job description

This is an Atlantic portfolio venture.

About the Venture

We are building AI infrastructure, with pre-seed funding secured, early customer demand and a product already in production.

We are now looking for a CTO & Co-Founder to shape the company and its technology, scale the product and build the engineering organisation.

About the Role

As CTO & Co-Founder, you will own the technical direction of the company and the team that delivers it. You will lead an existing team of 3 engineers, grow it and set the standards for how it works.

We are building an AI-native engineering team from day one, with agentic engineering at the centre of how we write, review and ship code. Coding agents are not an add-on, but the default way we build software.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will stay close to the code while making the technical and organisational decisions that shape the company as it grows.

What You'll Do

• Lead and develop our existing team of 3 engineers, set high engineering standards and take ownership of what the team ships

• Own technical hiring and build the engineering organisation as the company grows

• Set the technical direction, from architecture and roadmap to build-vs-buy decisions

• Scale and operate reliable AI infrastructure, including APIs, cloud infrastructure, security, GDPR and European data residency

• Stay hands-on, writing code and contributing directly to our core systems

• Build an AI-native engineering culture where coding agents such as Claude Code are central to how the team develops, reviews and ships software

• Design and continuously improve our agentic engineering setup, from harnesses and workflows to orchestrating multiple agents in parallel, evaluating their output and benchmarking what works

• Represent the company technically with customers, in security reviews and in investor conversations

About You

You are an experienced technical leader who still loves to build. You have hired and led engineers, shipped complex systems into production and know how to make good technical decisions under real-world constraints.

You already work extensively with coding agents and have strong convictions about how AI is changing software engineering. You want to build a team around that approach, and you're excited by the ownership, ambition and uncertainty of becoming a co-founder.

• Proven experience leading, hiring and managing engineering teams, ideally in a startup, whether as a CTO, VP Engineering, Engineering Manager or Tech Lead

• Strong backend and platform foundations, including distributed systems, API design, cloud infrastructure and production systems

• Hands‑on experience building and operating AI infrastructure and LLM‑powered systems in production

• Extensive daily use of coding agents such as Claude Code, with strong coding fundamentals and the judgement to review and own the quality of their output

• Experience designing and improving agentic engineering workflows for yourself or a team, including harnesses, multi‑agent orchestration and benchmarking, with a clear understanding of their capabilities and limitations

Nice to Have

• Experience optimising LLM cost and performance

• Experience serving and operating open‑weight models, including GPU and capacity decisions

Why Join

Funding is secured, an engineering team is in place and the product is already in production. But many of the most important decisions are still ahead.

You will have the opportunity to scale the technology, build the team and influence the direction of the company from an early stage, with co‑founder equity in the business you help build.

This is a full‑time role, based in our Berlin office 5 days a week, starting as soon as possible.