Founding Engineer (Data & Infrastructure)

ContextFab GmbH; München; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Early equity

Job summary

context/fab in Munich is seeking a Founding Engineer (Data & Infrastructure) to own the data platform from day zero. You will design, build, and evolve the data ingestion, storage, and Kubernetes backbone that powers our AI-driven shop-floor workflows.

You’ll work closely with founders, shape architecture at the edge to cloud, and drive production-ready pipelines for time-series, events, and documents, with a strong emphasis on reliability and velocity.

Qualifications

• Strong experience in data engineering, data science, and/or infrastructure in early-stage or high-ownership environments.
• Proficient in Python and SQL; Go is a strong plus.
• Hands-on production workload experience on Kubernetes with CI/CD, observability, and cloud fundamentals.

Responsibilities

• Own the core data platform, including ingestion, transformation, storage, and serving of time-series, event, and document data from factories.
• Build pipelines and orchestration flows feeding the knowledge graph, RAG, and agentic systems.
• Implement integrations with industrial data sources (PLCs, historians, MES/ERP, OPC UA, MQTT) from edge to cloud.
• Manage end-to-end Kubernetes infrastructure (Argo CD, Helm, GitHub Actions, observability, secure deployments).
• Develop ML and analytics workflows from feature pipelines to model deployment and monitoring.

Skills

Python

SQL

Data engineering

Distributed systems concepts

Education

Degree in Computer Science or related

Equivalent experience

Tools

Kubernetes

Argo CD

Helm

GitHub Actions

Kafka

Job description

About the Role

We're building context/fab, a venture-backed industrial AI startup on a mission to upgrade manufacturing by solving the hardest data problems on the shop floor.

As our Founding Engineer (Data & Infrastructure), you'll work directly with the founders and own the data and platform foundation everything else runs on. That means how industrial data moves from machines into our platform, how it powers our agentic workflows and graph-based RAG, and the Kubernetes infrastructure behind it all. You won't inherit a system. You'll design it, build it, and decide how it evolves.

What You'll Own

• Our core data platform, covering ingestion, transformation, storage, and serving of time-series, event, and document data from factories
• Pipelines and orchestration flows that feed our knowledge graph, RAG, and agentic systems
• Integrations with industrial data sources such as PLCs, historians, MES/ERP, OPC UA, and MQTT, from the edge to the cloud
• Our Kubernetes infrastructure end to end, including Argo CD, Helm, GitHub Actions, observability, and secure deployments
• ML and analytics workflows, from feature pipelines to model deployment and monitoring
• Technical requirements, shaped firsthand at customer visits and pilots on the shop floor
• Architecture and technical direction, as a true partner to the founders on key decisions

What Makes You a Great Fit

• Strong experience in data engineering, data science, and/or infrastructure, ideally in early-stage or high-ownership environments
• Deep proficiency in Python and SQL; experience with Go is a strong plus
• Hands-on experience running production workloads on Kubernetes, with solid CI/CD, observability, and cloud fundamentals
• Experience with modern data tooling such as orchestration frameworks, streaming systems (e.g., Kafka), and time-series or analytical databases
• Solid grounding in statistics or ML
• Experience with industrial/IoT or sensor data is a plus; exposure to knowledge graphs, RAG, or agentic systems is helpful
• You take full ownership, from whiteboard to production to 2 a.m. fixes, without waiting for requirements or permission
• Pragmatic, product-minded, and comfortable shipping under uncertainty
• Entrepreneurial: you want to build a company, not just pipelines
• Fluent in English; German is a plus

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience

Why Join Us

• Own the data and infrastructure architecture from day zero, with direct influence on product and company direction
• Build at the intersection of AI, manufacturing, and data, with huge real-world impact
• Help keep European manufacturing competitive through deep tech
• Shape our engineering culture in our Munich office as one of the first engineers
• Competitive salary and meaningful early equity
• Grow faster than anywhere else and experience a 10-year career in 2 years