Founding Product Engineer

About the Role

A well-funded European AI SaaS startup is looking for a Founding Product Engineer to take end-to-end ownership of product features — from initial hypothesis and rapid prototype all the way to production. You'll be joining the Engineering team at an early, high-growth stage, working on an AI-powered phone assistant platform used by thousands of SMEs across Europe. This is a high-ownership role with a strong product and customer focus, not just a coding position.

What You'll Do

• Own features end-to-end — from idea and discovery through architecture, implementation, and production release.
• Lead product discovery by forming and rapidly testing hypotheses through lightweight experiments and prototypes.
• Maintain close, recurring contact with customers, partners, and the Sales team to surface real pain points.
• Design and implement tracking to gather the metrics needed for data-driven decisions.
• Build across the full stack and drive architecture choices through to release.
• Prioritize pragmatic solutions that balance immediate validation with long-term scalability.
• Take radical ownership of initiatives and move them forward autonomously without waiting for sign-offs.

What We're Looking For

Must-haves:

• 3+ years of full-stack product engineering experience delivering end-to-end software features.
• Strong hands-on experience with Node.js, TypeScript, NestJS, and React.
• Native-level German proficiency (Deutsch auf Muttersprachniveau) — this is a hard requirement.
• Deep product mindset: you take responsibility beyond writing code and focus relentlessly on customer value.
• Experience integrating software with external systems such as CRMs, calendar apps, and databases.
• Ability to gather customer feedback, translate pain points into product decisions, and collaborate with sales and partners.
• Comfortable identifying, tracking, and analyzing relevant metrics to make data-driven decisions.

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience integrating AI/LLM services (e.g., OpenAI or similar).
• Familiarity with GDPR compliance and EU AI Act considerations in product development.
• Prior experience in a remote-first, asynchronous work environment.
• Background at a B2B SaaS or conversational AI company.

Location

This is a remote-first role with overlap expected in Central European Time (CET). There is an optional office in Vienna, Austria available for use. No visa sponsorship is available.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary: €80,000 – €120,000 annually
• Equity participation in a high-growth environment
• Opportunity to shape the product and engineering culture at the founding stage