Founding Engineer (m/f/d) - NLP Systems & Infrastructure

Stealth Start-Up; New Germany (MN); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founding engineer equity

Office near Munich east

Team retreats in the Alps

EGYM Wellpass

Bike leasing

Job-ticket

Job summary

Stealth Start-Up is seeking a Founding Engineer to turn a research prototype into a scalable product for enterprise and public‑sector customers. You will own the architecture, lead data/NLP pipelines, and take early ownership of hiring an engineering team.

You’ll shape the tech strategy, drive CI/CD, security decisions, and set engineering standards while closely collaborating with the founders. This is a high‑ownership role with rapid impact in a fast‑moving, startup environment.

Qualifications

• Python production‑quality habits: testing, CI/CD, observability.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of production system including data/NLP pipelines and AI/ML integrations.
• Own the engineering roadmap balancing speed, quality, and security.
• Develop first production slice hands‑on and validate infra and security decisions.
• Build, hire, and manage a high‑performing engineering team shortly after joining.
• Set architecture direction and enforce engineering standards.
• Move fast and iterate with founders and users in a Munich‑based team.

Skills

Python

Leadership

System architecture

CI/CD

Observability

NLP systems

Data pipelines

UI basics

Tools

Dagster

Prefect

Airflow

Temporal

PostgreSQL

Docker

Kubernetes

React

Vue

Job description

As Founding Engineer (m/w/d), you’ll join us as our first technical hire. The challenge ahead is turning a research-grade prototype into a product that enterprise and public‑sector customers can depend on. You will be trusted with significant ownership early on and wear several hats as things move fast and priorities shift. Your role will quickly expand to include hiring your own engineering team and taking on full staff responsibility.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of our production system, including orchestrated data/ NLP pipelines, AI/ML integrations, CI/CD, observability, and deployment options ranging from cloud to on‑prem.
• Own the engineering roadmap, balancing speed, quality, and security.
• Develop the first production slice entirely hands‑on and validate infrastructure and security design decisions.
• Build, hire, and manage a high‑performing engineering team shortly after joining.
• Act as a technical leader by setting architecture direction, enforcing engineering standards, and fostering a positive team culture.
• Move fast and iterate closely with the founders and users in a tight‑knit Munich‑based team.

Who We’re Looking For

You are our ideal candidate if you are equally excited about leading an engineering team as you are about being the engineering team until additional roles are filled. It’s a perfect match if you are also a quick study with big ambitions, a lot of grit, and a fundamental drive to make a positive impact on society.

What you should bring

• Python is your primary language, and you bring production‑quality engineering habits: automated testing, CI/CD, and observability including monitoring for data and model drift.
• You have built and operated data‑intensive or NLP systems in production: ingestion, deduplication, entity resolution, asynchronous processing via queues, and orchestrated pipelines (Dagster, Prefect, Airflow, Temporal or similar).
• You have experience with PostgreSQL and at least one of the following: graph databases, vector stores, or search engines.
• You are comfortable with embeddings, vector search and integrating language models while managing cost, versioning and non‑determinism.
• You are comfortable working across the stack when needed: you can build a clean API and a functional analyst‑facing UI (React, Vue or similar) yourself.
• You are willing and eligible to obtain a security clearance in the near future.

Nice to have

• You have experience acquiring and ingesting discourse data from platforms and the open web (official APIs, researcher access programmes, crawling) at scale, and an understanding of the legal and ethical constraints that come with it.
• You have experience packaging systems for customer‑hosted deployment (Docker, Kubernetes/Helm).
• You have experience working at an early‑stage start‑up.
• You speak German.

Note: We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

What We Offer

• Compensation & Equity: A generous founding engineer VSOP package alongside a competitive salary.
• Real ownership: You’re engineer #1. You join at the ground floor with a real opportunity for quick advancement into leadership as the company scales.
• Flexible working hours: We care about outcomes, not hours tracked, and value a healthy work‑life balance.
• Workspace: A large office space located east of Munich, with regular team carpooling available from the city centre.
• Retreats: We have a cabin in the Austrian mountains that we regularly use for off‑sites.
• Stay active: With EGYM Wellpass, you get access to thousands of fitness and sports facilities.
• Stay mobile: We support you in staying environmentally mobile with bike leasing and job‑ticket offers.

Our Commitment

We are an open-minded company that not only values diversity, but actively promotes it.

Regardless of gender, age, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation or disability, we firmly believe that the diversity of our employees is an essential part of our success.

At our company, every voice is heard and every perspective is valued.

We believe that our differences enrich us and help us to find creative solutions and generate innovative ideas.

We pride ourselves on creating an inclusive work environment where all employees can reach their full potential.

We value speed, open communication, high standards and a strong sense of ownership but what’s most important to us is a team built on trust and care for each other.

We believe exceptional companies are built through clear priorities and sustainable performance, not through performative long hours for the sake of proving a point.