Founder Associate - full-time (gn) @ SpaceTech Venture, Munich

Atlantic; München; On-site; EUR 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Arqus Aerospace, a Munich-based startup, is hiring a Founder Associate to help shape the company from day one. You will work directly with the three founders to build the team, set up processes, and drive the fundraising and partnerships that will propel our moonshot space technologies.

You will shape the culture, tooling, and governance as we grow from a tiny team to a scalable organization, while remaining deeply involved in product and business decisions.

Qualifications

• Top degree plus drive demonstrated outside academia.
• Track record of outsized responsibility and rapid growth.
• Experience at talent-dense environments (startup, fund, consulting, engineering).
• Something you started yourself that surpassed expectations.
• German, Dutch or another European language is a plus; automation experience is a bonus.

Responsibilities

• Build the team: lead hiring for first engineering and operations roles, from sourcing to onboarding.
• Help turn three founders into a company: define processes, tools and culture.
• Manage financial model, budgeting and fundraising, including investor updates and data room prep.
• Lead funding applications to ESA, the EU and national programmes.
• Prepare and join conversations with customers, partners and government.

Skills

Leadership

Team building

Fundraising

Startup experience

Strategic thinking

Education

Top degree

Job description

We're Arqus Aerospace. We're three founders, all engineers, with backgrounds at ESA, OHB, RFA and Astroscale. We're building directed-energy systems that protect satellites and critical infrastructure. Europe relies on space for almost everything, from navigation and communications to security, and right now it can do very little to protect what it has up there. We want to change that, and we want to build it here in Europe.

We're backed by Atlantic and based in Munich.

Now we're looking for a Founder Associate. You'll report to our CEO and work across all three of us. While we focus on the technology, you'll help build the company around it: the team, the processes, the funding and the first partnerships. If you want to learn what it really takes to build a company from zero, this is the place to do it.

We'll be direct about who we're looking for. We want people who want to be here from day one, when there's no playbook and everything is still being decided. People with an incredible work ethic, who care about getting things right and keep going when it's hard. People who are drawn to literal moonshot technology and would rather take on something that seems impossible than something safe. We're a very small team taking on one of the hardest problems in European defence, so every early hire shapes the standard for everyone who comes after.

What you'd be working on

• Building the team: running hiring for our first engineering and operations roles, from sourcing and interviews to offers and onboarding
• Turning three founders into a company: how we work, the tools and processes we use, and the culture we want to keep as we grow
• Our financial model, budget and fundraising, including investor updates and the data room for our next round
• Funding applications to ESA, the EU and national programmes
• Preparing and joining our first conversations with customers, partners and government
• Getting the foundations right: legal, procurement, export control and security
• Automating as much as we can from day one, so we stay small and fast
• Whatever is blocking us that week

Who we're looking for

You've been exceptional everywhere you've been, and it shows on paper. That might look like:

• A top degree, plus proof of drive outside of it: something you built, a team you led, or a sport you competed in at a high level
• A track record of taking on outsized responsibility in your previous roles and growing faster than your peers
• Experience at places known for their talent density, like a top startup, fund, consulting firm or engineering team
• Something you started yourself that went further than anyone expected

Beyond that, you:

• Hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone else does
• Are sharp with numbers, can build a financial model from scratch and defend every assumption in it
• Want to build a company from zero, not manage something that already exists, and care about every part of it, from hiring to finance to culture
• Pick up technical depth fast, so our engineers take you seriously (a STEM or engineering background helps)
• Care about space, defence and European sovereignty
• Build things on the side, and we'd love to hear about them
• Are in Munich or happy to move here

Big plus: you speak German, Dutch or another European language alongside English, and you've automated workflows before.

What we offer

You'll work side by side with the three of us and be in the room for the big decisions, from who we hire to how we raise. Being that close to our fundraising also means you'll get properly immersed in the venture capital world, which is great preparation if you want to found a company yourself one day or move into VC.

We're early, so the role grows with you. If you do well, there's a good chance you'll end up leading a part of the company as we scale. And you'll be doing all of it on moonshot technology in space, one of the biggest market opportunities of our time.