Staff Engineer (m/f/d)

A11; Berlin; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Entrepreneurial freedom

Founding team equity potential

Competitive base and bonus

Investor collaboration with unicorns

Job summary

A11 is seeking a hands-on Staff Engineer to report to the VP Engineering at one of our Ecosystem Companies. You will own the hardest technical problems, set the target architecture across teams, and write code yourself to keep a fast-growing trading business fast, correct and reliable.

In this role you’ll carve out our transaction core from Salesforce into a modular system, design for reliability, security and observability, and mentor engineers while shaping how AI agents are deployed in

Qualifications

• 8+ years of production software experience.
• Backend production scale in Java or Kotlin/C#/Go.
• Experience setting architecture across multiple teams.
• Designing transactional, distributed and event-driven systems.
• Strong reliability, security and observability focus.
• Experience in fast-growing companies solving business problems.
• AI in production is a plus.
• Experience carving out systems from platforms like Salesforce.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction across teams and define the target architecture.
• Lead the hardest technical work from design to production.
• Shape the carve-out of our transaction core from Salesforce into a modern modular system.
• Make reliability, security and observability integral to the build process.
• Design how AI agents act safely with guardrails and audit trails.
• Set standards for correctness and data integrity including idempotency, validation and testing.
• Mentor engineers through reviews and help hire by defining what great engineering looks like.

Skills

Backend architecture

Java & Spring Boot

Distributed systems

Reliability & observability

AI integration

Incident response

Mentoring engineers

Cloud/AWS

Postmortems

Tools

LangGraph

LLM APIs

PostgreSQL

Kinesis

Terraform

GitHub Actions

TypeScript

Node.js

Next.js

React

AWS

Job description

As a key growth accelerator, A11 partners with Europe's most ambitious startups and scaleups, corporates and SMBs to connect them with top-tier talent ready to make an impact.

We're looking for a hands-on Staff Engineer reporting to the VP Engineering at one of our Ecosystem Companies. You own the hardest technical problems, set the architecture across teams and keep a fast-growing trading business fast, correct and reliable, while still writing code yourself.

Join the A11 Ecosystem - a next-generation supply chain platform redefining how one of the world's largest industries sources, distributes, and finances materials. Engineered to unlock the full potential of global trade, it harnesses agentic AI and workflow automation to provide seamless, high-efficiency access to premium materials at scale. Since its commercial rollout, the platform has fueled exponential growth, optimizing procurement for thousands of businesses while setting new benchmarks for speed, transparency, and efficiency. Its competitive edge lies in full digitization and AI-driven supply chain management automation, eliminating inefficiencies and creating a direct, intelligent bridge between suppliers and buyers. With a team of 80+ FTEs across Europe (Berlin HQ), China, and India, the company is rapidly scaling toward profitability, driving triple-digit million GMV, and setting new industry standards in autonomous, AI-powered supply chain orchestration.

In this role, you'll:

• Set the technical direction across teams: define the target architecture, write the RFCs behind big decisions, and make sure teams build towards the same picture
• Lead the hardest technical work yourself, from design to production, instead of only advising on it
• Shape the carve-out of our transaction core from Salesforce into a modern, modular core system, with a migration path that never disrupts daily trading
• Make reliability, security and observability part of how we build: monitoring, alerting, incident response and postmortems that lead to real changes
• Design how our AI agents act safely on money-touching paths, with evaluations, guardrails, audit trails and human review where it matters
• Set standards for correctness and data integrity, including idempotency, validation and testing, together with QA
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, pairing and direct feedback, and help us hire by defining what great engineering looks like at the company

Tech stack: Java 21 and Spring Boot 3, Python, LangGraph and LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini), PostgreSQL, Kinesis, AWS with Terraform, GitHub Actions, and TypeScript with Node.js, Next.js and React.

Your Profile:

• At least 8 years of experience building and running software in production, including systems where errors cost real money
• Deep backend expertise at production scale in Java or a comparable language such as Kotlin, C# or Go, and willingness to work in Java and Spring Boot
• A track record of setting architecture across several teams, through influence rather than a management title
• Experience designing transactional, distributed and event-driven systems, with a strong focus on correctness, failure modes and performance
• Hands-on depth in reliability, security and observability, and experience leading incidents and postmortems
• Experience in a fast-growing company, and a track record of solving business problems, not only technical ones
• AI is part of your daily work. Experience building or evaluating AI agents in production is a strong plusExperience with re-platforming or carving out systems from a platform like Salesforce or an ERP is a plus
• Start date: as soon as possible

Please note that this position is based in Berlin.

Benefits and Perks:

• Fulfil a role with entrepreneurial freedom and help scale a high-impact business model
• Join an experienced founding team of serial and 2nd-time founders
• Attractive base and bonus compensation program
• Collaboration with top-tier investors and angels (incl. various unicorn founders) as well as leading market experts

If you're eager to join the A11 Ecosystem and shape what's next, we want to hear from you!

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

A11 is committed to diverse and equal opportunities hiring for all - applicants, candidates, and employees alike. We value humans - with all our glorious multifaceted backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences - and look forward to your application.