Staff Engineer

Role details

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a founding-level Staff Engineer role at a Y Combinator–backed B2B SaaS startup building AI-powered sales automation for distributors and manufacturers. You'll serve as the technical backbone of a small, fast-moving engineering organisation — owning high-leverage systems across multiple products and setting the architectural foundation that the company scales on. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the most complex, highest-leverage engineering work: core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure. - Define and evolve architecture decisions that prevent long-term dead-ends across products and development streams. - Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping production code, leading by example. - Eliminate technical debt through refactoring, raising reliability and engineering standards across the codebase. - Mentor engineers via code review, pairing, and direct feedback to improve team output and reduce hidden risk. - Contribute to the architecture and implementation of AI capabilities, including LLM pipelines and data infrastructure. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 8+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of solving genuinely hard technical problems in production. - 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, including long-term architectural strategy. - Demonstrated ability to improve system performance, reliability, and scalability at scale. - Cloud and DevOps fluency: containerisation (Docker), cloud platforms (Azure/AWS/GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform). - Experience building or integrating AI systems, LLMs, or large-scale data pipelines — a strong plus. - A hands-on technical leader who multiplies team effectiveness and raises quality without prompting. - Mission-driven, pragmatic, and decisive under uncertainty. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Salary range: €90,000 – €200,000 per year. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. This role requires in-person presence.