Staff Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a founding Staff Engineer position at a seed-stage AI SaaS startup building automation tools for inside sales workflows in distribution and manufacturing. You will serve as the technical backbone of a small, fast-moving engineering team, owning high-leverage systems across multiple products and setting the standard for quality, reliability, and AI capabilities. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the most complex, highest-leverage engineering work: core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure. - Define and evolve architecture decisions across multiple products to prevent long-term technical dead-ends. - Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping production code, leading by example. - Eliminate technical debt by refactoring abstractions and raising 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. - Demonstrated ability to improve system performance, reliability, and scalability at scale. - Cloud and DevOps fluency: containerization (Docker), cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform). - 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; comfortable working with intensity in a high-growth startup environment. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Salary range: 80,000 to 130,000 EUR annually. No visa sponsorship is available for this role. LOCATION On-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. This role requires full-time in-person presence.