Founding Software Engineer (Full-Stack / Infrastructure)

About the Role

This is a founding engineering position at an early-stage AI legaltech startup based in Munich. You will work directly with the founding team and customers to shape the product, engineering culture, and technical architecture from the ground up. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role for someone who thrives in small, fast-moving teams and wants to leave a lasting mark on a product and codebase.

What You'll Do

• Build and scale core systems from early architecture through to production-ready, enterprise-grade deployments
• Develop customer-facing applications using modern TypeScript tooling, including React and Next.js
• Extend and build tooling around an internal domain-specific language (DSL) designed for legal and compliance automation
• Contribute to a no-code, AI-first platform that allows customers to inspect and edit workflow logic visually
• Design reliable backend and platform foundations capable of handling enterprise workloads
• Deploy and operate software across cloud and hybrid (on-prem + cloud) environments with strong security and compliance standards
• Collaborate directly with customer IT and operations teams on integrations, security reviews, and technical due diligence
• Integrate and deploy LLMs and ML inference pipelines (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, LangChain or equivalent)
• Influence product direction through close feedback loops with users and customers

What We're Looking For

Required

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building production web applications or services
• Proficiency in TypeScript for full-stack development — Node.js on the backend, React/Next.js (or equivalent) on the frontend
• Experience designing and deploying applications on major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including containerisation (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Experience with hybrid or multi-cloud architectures (on-prem + cloud) and associated networking/infrastructure trade-offs
• Hands-on experience integrating and deploying LLMs or ML inference pipelines
• Experience with enterprise deployment patterns — on-prem installs, deployment automation, staging/production lifecycles
• Experience implementing security and compliance controls (IAM, data protection, threat mitigation) and familiarity with GDPR and/or SOC 2
• Proven experience with CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and incident response (e.g. GitHub Actions, monitoring/alerting tooling)
• Track record of shipping end-to-end product features at early-stage startups or small teams
• Strong communication skills; able to collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, security, and operations stakeholders
• Ability to work autonomously, drive architecture decisions, and operate with high ownership in a founding-team context
• Authorisation to work in Germany without employer-sponsored visa (no visa sponsorship available)

Nice to Have

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Location

This role is on-site in Munich, Germany. Remote or hybrid arrangements are not available for this position.

Why This Role

• Founding engineer seat — direct influence on technical strategy, stack decisions, and team culture
• Work at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and legal/compliance automation
• Small team, fast iteration cycles, and tight customer feedback loops
• Opportunity to grow into a technical leadership role as the team scales