Technical Cofounder / CTO | AI & ML PreSeed Startup

Founders Factory; Berlin; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Co-founder equity

Ownership of tech

Strong network access

Impactful mission

Job summary

Founders Factory in Berlin is seeking a hands-on Co-Founder & CTO to build the technology and product that scales the company. You will own the technology end-to-end, guide architecture, roadmap, and build-vs-buy decisions, while turning our MVP into a production-grade system used by technicians in the field.

You will lead ML-centric development, design reliable AI workflows, recruit and lead the engineering team, and shape strategy and investor conversations with the founding team.

Qualifications

• 3+ years applying ML in production systems.
• Hands-on engineer who ships features.
• Experience leading a tech team from zero to one.

Responsibilities

• Own technology end-to-end including architecture and roadmap.
• Lead MVP-to-production deployment for field technicians.
• Build AI workflows and integrations with customer systems.
• Improve ML core and multimodal inputs.
• Design UX/UI for field technicians.
• Recruit and lead the engineering team.

Skills

Machine Learning in prod

Entrepreneurial mindset

Technical lead experience

Backend & APIs

ML/NLP/Computer vision

German and English fluency

Cross-functional collaboration

Hands-on coding

Education

Master's degree in CS/ML/DS/Math/Physics/EE

Tools

Azure

Security & GDPR

Job description

About us

Expertise is the bottleneck in technical field service. We are building the AI that makes it scale – and learns from every visit, from every job.

• Stealth-mode AI venture building a copilot that guides technicians at every job like an experienced master craftsman – before, during and after every job
• Built in the field, not behind closed doors: our product is developed with direct access to thousands of technicians with a leading European real estate industry partner – every feature is tested on real jobs, with results in days instead of months
• Backed by Founders Factory; founding team in Berlin, MVP built and tested with technicians, now heading towards spin-out and first funding
• Vision: Europe’s leading field service intelligence layer.

The role

We have built and tested our MVP. Now we are looking for a hands-on Co-Founder & CTO who builds the technology and product that grows and scales the company.

What you will do

• Own the technology end to end: architecture, roadmap, build-vs-buy decisions, reliability and security
• Take the tested MVP to a production-grade product used daily by technicians in the field
• Build reliable AI workflows and repeatable integrations into customer systems such as work orders and asset data
• Continuously improve the Machine Learning core: retrieval over manufacturer and expert knowledge, multimodal input (photo, voice) and diagnostic reasoning
• Design and build the learning engine that makes the product smarter with every visit: capturing, reviewing, evaluating and reusing confirmed outcomes – the core of our knowledge moat
• Set up evaluation, safety and monitoring: expert-reviewed benchmark cases, grounding, escalation and regression testing
• Build a state-of-the-art UX/UI that technicians want to use every day
• Spend time with technicians in the field and turn their feedback into product within days
• Recruit and lead the engineering team as we scale
• Shape the company as a co-founder: strategy, culture and investor conversations alongside the founding team

What you bring

• Machine Learning experience, ideally 3+ years applying it in production products (e.g. LLMs, retrieval/RAG, NLP, computer vision, model evaluation)
• Entrepreneurial mindset: you want to build a company, not just a product – full ownership, bias for action and comfort with ambiguity
• Experience leading the technical build of a product from zero to one, e.g. as tech lead or founding engineer
• Hands-on software engineering across backend, APIs, data pipelines and cloud – you still build and ship yourself
• Sound technical judgement: you know the limits of LLMs, how to test them and when not to use them
• Product empathy: you enjoy learning from users in the field and making complex work simple
• Fluent German and English – German is needed for working with technicians and technical source material
• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning/AI, Data Science, Mathematics, Physics, Electrical Engineering or a related quantitative field

Nice to have

• PhD in Machine Learning, NLP, Computer Vision, Information Retrieval or a related field
• Previous founder or early-stage startup experience
• Experience with Microsoft Azure and enterprise B2B requirements (security, GDPR, multi-tenant SaaS)
• Background in field service, industrial, maintenance or proptech software
• Experience with multimodal AI, voice interfaces or decision-support systems
• Experience hiring and leading engineering teams

What we offer

• Competitive compensation package, including a meaningful co-founder equity stake
• A true co-founder role with ownership of the technology and a real say in the direction of the company
• An unfair head start: a cooperating partner with thousands of technicians and real repair data from day one – the fuel for a system that learns from every job
• A tested MVP and a clear path to spin-out and fundingSupport from Founders Factory’s network across tech, design and growth
• A mission with real-world impact: helping close the skilled-trades gap in Europe

Location & start

• Berlin / hybrid, flexible
• Full-time; start as soon as possible