Founding Head of Engineering

United States Digital Space LLC; Berlin; Vor Ort; EUR 180.000 - 270.000; Vollzeit

Benefits dieser Stelle

Founding equity and ownership

Direct partnership with the founder

AI-native engineering definition

Small, ambitious team

Relocation to Berlin

Top-tier hardware

AI tooling budget

Urban Sports Club

Six weeks work-from-anywhere

Zusammenfassung

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking a founding technical leader to build an AI-native engineering organization in Berlin. This is a hands-on builder role, not a management track, working directly with the founder to shape architecture, culture, workflows and product from day one.

You'll own the platform, design the AI operating system, set technical direction, hire and mentor engineers, and drive velocity and quality as the company scales.

Qualifikationen

• Deep Python production experience and ownership of complex architectures from day one.

Aufgaben

• Own the platform evolution around agentic workflows, modern backend architecture, and AI-native software development.
• Define the AI operating system and how humans and AI collaborate across engineering.
• Set the technical direction, architecture, and platform strategy for scalable growth.
• Build and mentor an exceptional engineering team with a high-quality bar.
• Define engineering culture, values, rituals, and governance to attract top engineers.
• Increase engineering velocity and developer leverage by optimizing workflows.
• Make decisions on what to build in-house versus buy and how AI changes software building.

Kenntnisse

Python backend

AI-native engineering

Technical leadership

Product & systems thinking

Ownership

Tools

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

OpenAI & Anthropic APIs

Cursor / Claude Code

Cloud infrastructure

Jobbeschreibung

We're building what engineering looks like after AI.

Not by adding AI tools to traditional workflows, but by rebuilding the way software is designed, built, and shipped from first principles.

the company is an AI-native logistics infrastructure company helping some of Europe's largest shippers recover millions in carrier overcharges, automate logistics operations, and transform fragmented carrier data into financial intelligence. We already process millions of shipments every month, and everything we build is shaped around agentic engineering and AI-native workflows.

We're looking for a founding technical leader to build that future with us.

This is not a management role. It's a builder's role.

It's an all-encompassing role for a hands-on visionary, someone who wants to shape our architecture, our culture, our workflows and our product from first principles.

You'll spend your first months deep in production Python, working directly with the founder to shape our platform architecture while defining how engineering should operate as we scale. You'll shape our architecture, engineering culture, AI workflows, hiring, and technical direction from day one.

If you've been looking for the opportunity to build an engineering organisation from first principles rather than inheriting one, this is it.

TasksRather than simply leading engineers, you'll build the engineering organisation itself.

Over your first 12-24 months you'll own:

• Own the platform. Shape the evolution of the company's auditing platform around agentic workflows, modern backend architecture, and AI-native software development.
• Define our AI operating system. Design how humans and AI collaborate across engineering. Build the workflows, tooling, review processes and operating principles that allow a small team to ship like a much larger one.
• Set the technical direction. Own our architecture, platform strategy and technical roadmap. Make the long-term decisions that determine how the company scales over the next five years.
• Build an exceptional engineering team. Hire outstanding engineers, coach them, and set an uncompromising quality bar.
• Define our engineering culture. Set the values, standards and rituals that will attract exceptional engineers over the next decade. The culture you build now is the culture we scale.
• Increase engineering velocity. Own the metrics that matter. Continuously improve quality, speed, reliability and developer leverage.
• Make high-conviction technology decisions. Decide what we build ourselves, what we buy, and where AI fundamentally changes how software should be built.

What success looks like

• During your first year you'll:
• Ship the next version of our auditing platform, built around AI-native workflows.
• Establish the engineering operating model for the company.
• Hire 2-4 exceptional engineers.
• Dramatically increase engineering velocity through agentic development.
• Define the architecture that powers the company's next stage of growth.

Requirements

• You're a builder first. You enjoy writing production code as much as leading technical strategy. You want founding-level ownership, not a large management hierarchy.
• Deep Python expertise. You've built and shipped production backend systems and are comfortable taking ownership of complex architectures from day one.
• AI-native engineering. You already use tools like Cursor, Claude Code or Codex every day. You're not experimenting with AI. You're building with it. You believe the biggest engineering advantage of the next decade will come from teams that learn to orchestrate humans and AI together.
• Technical leadership. You've led high-performing engineering teams before, but you still enjoy being one of the strongest individual contributors.
• Product and systems thinking. You design systems that survive years, not launches. You think clearly before you build. You optimise for simplicity, leverage and operational excellence.
• Ownership. You don't wait for permission. You take responsibility for outcomes, make decisions with incomplete information and raise the standard around you.

Our stack

Current technologies include:

• Python
• FastAPI
• PostgreSQL
• OpenAI & Anthropic APIs
• Cursor / Claude Code
• Modern cloud infrastructure

We're pragmatic about tools and expect you to evolve the stack as the company grows.

Benefits

• Founding-level ownership and meaningful equity.
• Direct partnership with the founder.
• The opportunity to define what AI-native engineering looks like in practice.
• A small, ambitious team with exceptionally high standards.
• Full relocation support to Berlin.
• Top-tier hardware and generous AI tooling budget.
• Urban Sports Club membership.
• Six weeks work-from-anywhere each year.

We're not looking for someone to manage engineering. We're looking for someone who wants to redefine how engineering is done.

If you're excited by the idea of building an AI-native engineering organisation from first principles, and writing the production code that makes it real, we'd love to talk.