Staff Engineer (Founding)

Clera; United States; On-site; USD 161,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Clera in Munich, Germany is seeking a Founding Staff Engineer to serve as the technical backbone of our small, high-velocity engineering team. This hands-on leadership role focuses on producing production code, shaping architecture, and delivering high-impact AI capabilities across products.

You will own core systems, mentor engineers, and drive architectural decisions to improve performance and reliability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience in production environments.
• Deep full-stack expertise with strong backend, API and infrastructure skills; frontend when needed (Python, React, TypeScript).
• Proven experience designing and evolving systems across multiple products and teams.
• Demonstrated ability to improve system performance, reliability, and scalability at scale.
• Cloud and DevOps fluency: containerization (Docker), cloud platforms (Azure / AWS / GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Experience working in an early-stage or founding-team environment — comfortable with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and high-paced delivery.
• Proven track record of reducing technical debt and refactoring abstractions to raise coding standards across teams.
• Experience mentoring engineers through code reviews, pairing, and direct feedback.

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical anchor across multiple products and development streams, owning the highest-leverage engineering work.
• Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping production-quality code — leading by example, not by committee.
• Define and evolve architectural decisions that prevent long-term dead-ends across products and teams.
• Own core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure end-to-end.
• Eliminate technical debt through disciplined refactoring and by raising reliability and engineering standards organization-wide.
• Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and direct feedback — multiplying team output and reducing hidden risk.
• Contribute to the architecture and implementation of AI capabilities, including LLM pipelines and data infrastructure.

Tools

Python

React

TypeScript

Docker

Azure

AWS

GCP

Terraform

Job description

About the Role

We are a fast-growing, early-stage AI startup in the enterprise software space — backed by top-tier investors including Y Combinator — building intelligent automation for sales workflows in distribution and manufacturing. We're looking for a Founding Staff Engineer to serve as the technical backbone of our small, high-velocity engineering team.

This is a hands-on leadership role for a senior engineer who loves writing and shipping production code, cares deeply about system quality, and thrives in an environment where their decisions have outsized, lasting impact. You'll work across multiple products, own the most complex engineering challenges, and directly shape the architecture and AI capabilities of the platform.

What You'll Do

• Act as the technical anchor across multiple products and development streams, owning the highest-leverage engineering work.

• Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping production-quality code — leading by example, not by committee.

• Define and evolve architectural decisions that prevent long-term dead-ends across products and teams.

• Own core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure end-to-end.

• Eliminate technical debt through disciplined refactoring and by raising reliability and engineering standards organization-wide.

• Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and direct feedback — multiplying team output and reducing hidden risk.

• Contribute to the architecture and implementation of AI capabilities, including LLM pipelines and data infrastructure.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of solving genuinely hard technical problems in production environments.

• Deep full-stack expertise with strong backend, API, and infrastructure skills; comfortable on the frontend when needed (Python, React, TypeScript).

• Proven experience designing and evolving systems across multiple products and teams.

• Demonstrated ability to improve system performance, reliability, and scalability at scale.

• Cloud and DevOps fluency: containerization (Docker), cloud platforms (Azure / AWS / GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform).

• Experience working in an early-stage or founding-team environment — comfortable with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and high-paced delivery.

• Proven track record of reducing technical debt and refactoring abstractions to raise coding standards across teams.

• Experience mentoring engineers through code reviews, pairing, and direct feedback.

Nice to Have:

• Experience building or integrating AI systems, LLMs, or large-scale data pipelines.

• Familiarity with enterprise ERP/CRM integrations (e.g. SAP, Oracle).

Traits that will set you apart:

• Deep technical ownership — you notice and fix slipping quality without prompting.

• Mission-driven, pragmatic, and decisive under uncertainty.

• A leader who leads through doing and multiplies the effectiveness of those around them.

Location

This role is on-site in Munich, Germany. Candidates must be willing and able to work in person in Munich. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Compensation & Benefits

Compensation details are not specified for this role. You'll be joining as a founding team member at a well-funded, seed-stage startup with significant scope, ownership, and career upside.

Find Jobs in Germany on Arbeitnow