Founding AI Engineer
Hera (YC S25)
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Benefits offered by this job
Job summary
Qualifications
- Proven experience in AI systems and animation generation.
- Strong understanding of core motion design principles.
- Demonstrated ability to work in ambiguous environments.
Responsibilities
- Build and optimize AI systems for animation generation.
- Develop frameworks to evaluate animation quality.
- Collaborate with designers and marketers for AI training.
Skills
Tools
Job description
We're building the world's first AI motion designer that creates professional animations in seconds.
Video is the most effective medium, but video creators waste countless hours animating seconds of content. Motion design tools like After Effects require mastering complex user interfaces, turning creative work into button‑clicking hell. We're starting with motion design because it's the most painful and expensive part of video creation.
Hera is the first AI motion designer that creates professional animations through conversation. Unlike video‑gen tools, Hera generates code‑based animations where every parameter can be fine‑tuned through prompts or on‑canvas editing, giving users the control of After Effects with the simplicity of Lovable.
In our first two weeks after launch, users created over 200,000 animations.
Our founders: Peter Tribelhorn (CEO) built YouTube channels with 50B+ views. Chia‑Lun Wu (CTO) was one of the first developers at Vyond, where he built their video editor used by 20,000 businesses today.
- Build and optimize AI systems to generate high‑quality animations that follow core motion design principles (easing, non‑linear movement, visual hierarchy)
- Develop comprehensive evaluation frameworks to assess animation quality, combining automated metrics with expert validation from motion designers
- Partner with motion designers and marketers to translate professional design knowledge into AI training data and evaluation criteria
- Design and implement fine‑tuning pipelines that teach Hera domain‑specific animation styles and brand guidelines
- Create feedback loops between user preferences, expert input, and model performance to continuously improve animation quality
- Research and prototype state‑of‑the‑art approaches for controllable, style‑consistent motion graphics generation
Our technology choices evolve with our needs. Current core technologies include TypeScript, React.js, Next.js, PostgreSQL, GCP/AWS, and our proprietary motion graphics engine. We prioritize learning velocity, end‑to‑end delivery, and adopt new languages or frameworks when they best serve our users and product goals.
- You're hungry. Not just ambitious, but obsessed with building something massive
- You're entrepreneurial. You've built things before and demand ownership
- You thrive in ambiguity. No roadmaps, no PMs, just problems to solve
- You have a growth mindset. We're small today, but building something huge. To grow the company, each of us needs to grow personally
- You work like an athlete. High performance, consistent improvement, whatever it takes to win
- You want to work in‑person in Berlin (we help you relocate if needed)
- We hire for slope, not intercept. We don't care about credentials; we care about trajectory
- You're picky about what you work on
- You lack curiosity or the hunger to learn
- You prefer structured environments with clear boundaries
- You think AI is just hype
- You want to specialize in one technology
We're building this team like Real Madrid: small, elite, with each person being a superstar. We believe we can reach $100M ARR with less than 20 people. As a founding engineer, you'll have:
- Life‑changing equity stake
- Above‑market salary
- Build a product used by thousands daily
- The chance to redefine how millions of users create video
- Office in Berlin Mitte (1 minute from Rosa‑Luxemburg‑Platz)
- All meals on us - we serve lunch and dinner 6 days/week
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