Staff Engineer

Role details

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a founding-level Staff Engineer opportunity at a Y Combinator–backed AI sales automation startup, where you'll serve as the technical backbone of a small, fast-moving engineering team. You'll own the highest-leverage systems across multiple products — from core infrastructure to AI capabilities — and play a defining role in how the engineering organisation scales. The work is hands-on, high-impact, and deeply cross-functional. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the most complex, highest-leverage engineering work: core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure across multiple products. - Define and evolve architecture decisions that prevent long-term dead-ends as the product portfolio grows. - Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping production code, leading by example. - Eliminate technical debt by refactoring abstractions and raising the bar on reliability and engineering standards. - Mentor engineers through 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. - Cloud and DevOps fluency: containerisation (Docker), cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform). - Demonstrated ability to improve system performance, reliability, and scalability at scale. - Experience building or integrating AI systems, LLMs, or large-scale data pipelines is a strong plus. - A hands-on technical leader who mentors by doing and multiplies team effectiveness. - Mission-driven, pragmatic, and decisive under uncertainty — comfortable with the intensity and pace of an early-stage startup. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Salary range: €80,000 – €130,000 per year. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. In-person presence is expected.