Product Engineer

Willidrop; Frankfurt; Hybrid; EUR 70.000 - 110.000; Vollzeit

Zusammenfassung

Willidrop, an early-stage startup building a marketplace for automotive logistics, seeks a Product Engineer to bridge product thinking and engineering from problem to production. You’ll own problems end-to-end, talk to users, turn unclear problems into prototypes, and ship solutions across frontend, backend, data and product.

You’ll work with TypeScript, AI coding agents, and modern web tech; relocate to Germany or be based in Germany is acceptable; hybrid on-site collaboration in Frankfurt will

Qualifikationen

• Experience building and shipping modern software.
• Strong foundations in software engineering and system design.
• Experience with TypeScript and modern web development.
• Ability to work across frontend and backend systems.
• Experience using AI coding agents as part of your regular development workflow.
• Based in Germany or willing to relocate.
• Strong written and verbal communication in English.

Aufgaben

• Own product problems end-to-end, from understanding the workflow to shipping the solution.
• Talk to users and customers instead of relying only on second-hand requirements.
• Turn unclear problems into working prototypes and production-ready software.
• Build and improve our marketplace, internal systems and agentic infrastructure.
• Use AI-native development workflows to move from idea to implementation quickly.
• Work across frontend, backend, data and product where necessary.
• Challenge requirements and propose simpler or better solutions.
• Measure whether what you shipped actually solved the problem.
• Take responsibility beyond the point where a pull request is merged.

Kenntnisse

End-to-end ownership

Software engineering

TypeScript

Frontend & Backend

AI coding agents

English communication

Germany-based or relocation

Tools

React

Next.js

Node.js

Python

Go

Django

PostgreSQL

Jobbeschreibung

For a long time, building software followed a predictable sequence. Product decided what should bebuilt. Design defined how it should work. Engineering implemented it.

That model made sense when implementation was the bottleneck. It makes less sense today.

We’re an early-stage startup rewiring how automotive logistics moves across Europe. Our managedmarketplace connects car dealers, auction houses, and fleets with professional transport carriers —built from day one to capture real workflows and data, and deliberately engineered to evolve intofully agentic systems.

The company is led by a repeat founder and backed by Rapid Pioneers, TA Ventures, True Growth, TLXCapital and well-known business angels.

As AI makes execution faster and cheaper, the difficult part of building software is shifting. Thechallenge is no longer just writing code. It is understanding the problem, deciding what should bebuilt and turning that understanding into a product that actually works.

That is why we’re looking for a Product Engineer: someone who can move from customerproblem to production without treating product thinking and engineering as separate jobs.

What You’ll Do

• Own product problems end-to-end, from understanding the workflow to shipping the solution
• Talk to users and customers instead of relying only on second-hand requirements
• Turn unclear problems into working prototypes and production-ready software
• Build and improve our marketplace, internal systems and agentic infrastructure
• Use AI-native development workflows to move from idea to implementation quickly
• Work across frontend, backend, data and product where necessary
• Challenge requirements and propose simpler or better solutions
• Measure whether what you shipped actually solved the problem
• Take responsibility beyond the point where a pull request is merged

You won’t receive perfectly defined tickets and disappear for two weeks. Some days you’ll build aprototype before lunch. Other days you’ll spend hours understanding why a workflow is broken beforewriting a single line of code. Both are part of the job.

What We’re Looking For

Must-Haves

• Experience building and shipping modern software
• Strong foundations in software engineering and system design
• Experience with TypeScript and modern web development
• The ability to work across frontend and backend systems
• Experience using AI coding agents as part of your regular development workflow
• Based in Germany or willing to relocate
• Strong written and verbal communication in English

German is useful, but not required. We care less about how many years you have worked with aspecific framework than whether you can understand a problem and build a good solution.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience with React, Next.js or Node.js
• Experience with Python, Go or Django
• Experience building AI-native or agentic products
• Experience with marketplaces, logistics or workflow-heavy B2B software
• Experience with Postgres, event-driven systems or cloud infrastructure
• Experience working directly with customers
• Previous startup or founding experience

Mindset & Soft Skills

• You naturally ask why before asking how
• You care about users as much as implementation
• You’re comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
• You can move quickly without confusing speed with carelessnessYou think in systems rather than isolated features
• You use AI as leverage, not as a substitute for judgement
• You take ownership instead of waiting for permission
• You’re willing to question your own assumptions after something ships

This role will probably feel natural if you’re a software engineer who has always gravitated towardsproduct discussions. It may also fit if you’re a founder, technical generalist or product-mindedbuilder who prefers owning the whole problem instead of one narrow part of delivery. It willprobably not be a good fit if you only want to implement predefined specifications.

What You’ll Get

• Real ownership over an important part of the product
• Direct access to customers, founders and business decisions
• The opportunity to define how an AI-native engineering organisation works
• High learning velocity and short feedback loops
• Modern AI tooling without legacy processes built around it
• The freedom to prototype, challenge assumptions and ship
• Remote flexibility with regular on-site collaboration in Frankfurt
• The opportunity to grow into a leading role as the company scales

We’re not trying to recreate a traditional product and engineering organisation with better tools.We’re building a company around the assumption that the way software gets built has fundamentallychanged. You’ll help us figure out what that looks like in practice.

Your Interview Journey

• Initial Conversation 20 min

  A first conversation with the founders to get to know each other, introduce the company andunderstand what kind of problems you want to work on.

We’ll discuss products and systems you’ve built, the decisions behind them and how you move froman unclear problem to a working solution.

• Practical Working Session 60-90 min

  You’ll work through a realistic product problem with us. We’re interested in how you askquestions, structure the problem, make trade-offs and use modern tools to arrive at a solution.This is not a LeetCode interview. We want to understand how you build.