Staff Software Engineer — AI Platform (all genders)

TradeLink; München; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Ownership in product development

AI-native team environment

Development budget for skill growth

In-person co-working Berlin & Munich

Job summary

TradeLink is seeking a Staff Software Engineer — AI Platform to build the runtime behind our agentic products. You will own agent context, tools, memory, retries, and resumability, shaping how AI agents operate in production within our logistics platform.

You will align with teams across product and customers, implement robust patterns for tools and documents, and ensure safe, observable decisions between deterministic logic and model-driven actions.

Qualifications

• 7+ years professional software engineering.
• Owned production systems: architecture, APIs, data models, reliability.
• Senior/Staff/Principal level ownership.
• Built LLM/agent workflows in production.
• Tool calling, outputs, state, retries, evals, permissions.
• Backend fundamentals: databases, APIs, auth, jobs, failure handling.
• Coding agents is part of your work.
• Enjoy writing production code.
• Fluent German and English.

Responsibilities

• Own agent context, tools, state, memory, retries and resumability.
• Manage permissions, tenancy, validation and audit trails.
• Implement evals and observability to reproduce and debug agent behavior.
• Build patterns for email, documents, APIs, browser-based systems and actions.
• Define the line between deterministic logic and model-driven decisions.
• Turn successful customer workflows into reusable platform capabilities.
• Address agent recovery and safety before production.
• Write production code in a hands-on Staff IC role.

Skills

Production systems

LLM workflows

Tool calling

German & English

Backend fundamentals

Production code

Tools

Ruby on Rails

React

TypeScript

PostgreSQL

Job description

About TradeLink

TradeLink builds agentic platforms that lift European supply chains to the next level. Intelligent AI agents take over the routine, while the important decisions and priorities stay with your team. A network connecting companies, suppliers and carriers ensures maximum transparency, reduces lost time, and creates a secure, trusted process. With TradeLink, you're always in command of your logistics — not chasing it.

Build AI that does work — not just talks about it

A supplier changes a delivery date in an email. The new quantity sits in a PDF. The operational system still contains yesterday's information.

TradeLink builds AI agents for real supply-chain operations: agents that understand incoming information, use tools, update workflows and bring humans in when judgment or approval is needed.

The hard part is not getting an LLM to produce a plausible answer. It is building the harness around it so an agent can safely do useful work in a real business.

That is what you will build.

Your responsibilities

As our Staff Software Engineer — AI Platform (all genders), you will build the common runtime behind TradeLink's agentic products.

You will own:

• Agent context, tools, state, memory, retries and resumability.
• Permissions, tenancy, validation, human approvals and audit trails.
• Evals and observability so we can reproduce, measure and debug agent behavior.
• Robust patterns for email, documents, APIs, browser-based systems and TradeLink actions.
• The line between deterministic application logic and model-driven decisions.
• Turning successful customer workflows into reusable platform capabilities.

You will work on questions such as: How does an agent recover when a target system fails halfway through a task? What happens when two messages contradict each other? Which actions can happen autonomously? How do we know an agent change is safe before it reaches production?

This is a hands-on Staff IC role. You will write production code.

What We’re Looking For

We are looking for an experienced software engineer who has gone deep on AI, not someone trying to become an engineer through AI.

We are looking for an experienced software engineer who has gone deep on AI, not someone trying to become an engineer through AI.

• Roughly 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent depth.
• You have owned production systems: architecture, APIs, data models, reliability, observability and incidents.
• You have operated at Senior/Staff/Principal level, as a strong Founding Engineer, or with equivalent technical ownership.
• You have built LLM or agent workflows that actually run in production — beyond prompts and API calls.
• You understand tool calling, structured outputs, state, retries, evals, permissions and human-in-the-loop patterns.
• You have strong backend fundamentals: databases, APIs, authentication/authorization, background jobs and failure handling.
• Coding agents are already a meaningful part of how you work.
• You still enjoy writing substantial production code yourself.
• Fluent German and English language skills are required

Our core product is built with Ruby on Rails, React, TypeScript and PostgreSQL. Rails experience is useful, but great engineering judgment and learning speed matter more.

Backgrounds that could fit

You might be:

• A Staff/Principal Backend or Platform Engineer from a strong SaaS company who became obsessed with agents.
• A Founding Engineer from an AI-native startup.
• An Applied AI Engineer who is, underneath the title, an excellent software engineer.
• A platform engineer from workflow automation, fintech or another environment where software actions have real consequences.

You do not need to be an ML researcher, train foundation models or have a PhD.

This probably isn't for you if

• Your AI experience stops at prompting.
• You mainly want to research models rather than ship product.
• You prefer architecture documents to production code.
• You need detailed tickets before making progress.
• You want to build a large platform before proving what customers need.
• You believe generated code is useful without understanding and verifying it.

How we think about AI

AI should multiply an already strong engineering foundation.We expect you to delegate aggressively to agents — exploration, implementation, testing, debugging — while remaining responsible for the result.You know where agents are excellent. You also know where they confidently produce nonsense.

Verification matters as much as generation.

Why TradeLink

We already sit inside real supply-chain operations. We are not searching for hypothetical AI use cases.Every day, important processes still depend on people reading emails, opening PDFs and Excel files, calling for confirmation and manually transferring information between systems.

We are building an agentic layer around that work.

You get real production problems, direct access to Product and customers, and enough ownership to materially shape how the platform is built.

How we interview

We want the interview to resemble the job. We will talk about systems you have actually built, and in the technical working session AI tools are allowed and expected.We care about how you frame the problem, use AI, make decisions, verify the result and simplify.

One question before you apply: What do you do fundamentally differently as an engineer today because coding agents exist?

What we offer

• Impact, Innovation & Ownership:Shape our fast-growing, AI-native B2B startup in logistics. We work in small, focused pods, where everyone owns real outcomes – not just tasks. Influence product, customer solutions, growth, and brand. We think big, move fast, and solve real problems.
• AI-Powered, Human-Led:Work at the forefront of an organization built AI-native. You use AI to multiply your impact – while judgment, creativity, and ownership stay clearly human.
• Learn & Grow Fast:Continuous feedback, 360° reviews, and a dedicated development budget to build exactly the skills you need. Work closely with an experienced management team that sets direction – rather than managing your day-to-day in detail.
• Passionate Team:Join a motivated, supportive team that values clarity, ownership, and real impact. In our pods, you work in tight-knit, well-coordinated teams – with real collaboration, not just shared tools.
• Culture & Belonging:Inclusive, diverse, and fun – from virtual team events to unforgettable offsites, we build a strong sense of community everywhere, including regular in-person co-working in Berlin and Munich.
• Own a Piece of Success:Through our VSOP program, you directly share in the company's growth.

Furthermore, you can read more about us and our culture here.

If you aren't completely confident that you meet our criteria, we recommend just taking the chance and applying anyway! Curiosity, passion for digital disruption, eagerness to learn, a collaborative spirit, and a growth mindset are most important to us.

TradeLink strongly believes in the power of diversity and is highly committed to providing a respectful, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone who works here or with us. In order to eliminate unconscious biases in the recruiting process, you can remove the photo from your application.

For more information on data processing in the context of applications, please see our privacy policy for the TradeLink application system.