Founding AI Engineer | AI-Native Startup | Berlin
Location: Berlin (5 days on-site)
Employment: Full-time
Package: Competitive salary + Equity
Languages: German & English
AI Futures has been exclusively retained to identify Founding AI Engineers for an early-stage, well-funded AI startup based in Berlin.
The company is building an AI-native product from the ground up and is now looking for exceptional engineers to join the founding team and play a major role in shaping the product, architecture and engineering culture.
This is not a role for someone looking to own one small part of an established system. You'll work directly with the founders, move quickly and have genuine influence over what gets built and how it's built.
The Opportunity
As one of the company's earliest engineers, you'll take significant ownership across the technical organisation.
You'll be building production AI applications, developing intelligent workflows and solving the engineering challenges required to turn modern AI capabilities into a scalable commercial product.
You'll work closely with the founders on everything from product decisions and architecture to implementation and deployment.
What You'll Be Doing
- Build core parts of an AI-native product from the ground up.
- Develop production applications using LLMs, Generative AI and Agentic AI.
- Design and build intelligent, multi-step AI workflows.
- Take ownership from initial idea through to production.
- Make important architectural and engineering decisions.
- Build scalable backend systems and APIs.
- Work across AI, software engineering, infrastructure and product where required.
- Rapidly prototype new ideas and turn successful experiments into robust production features.
- Work directly with the founders on product and technical strategy.
- Help establish engineering standards, processes and culture.
- Play a major role in future technical hiring as the company scales.
Who We're Looking For
- Strong Software Engineering / AI Engineering background.
- Hands-on experience building production applications with modern AI technologies.
- Strong knowledge of Python and backend engineering.
- Experience with LLMs, RAG, AI Agents or Agentic workflows.
- Strong understanding of software architecture and system design.
- Comfortable owning problems end-to-end rather than working within a narrow engineering remit.
- Previous startup experience is highly desirable.
- Founding Engineer, early employee or entrepreneurial experience would be particularly attractive.
- Evidence of building and shipping products quickly.
- High level of ownership, autonomy and commercial awareness.
- Comfortable working directly with founders in a fast-moving environment.
- Genuine interest in AI beyond simply integrating third-party APIs.
- Fluent German and English.
- Willingness to work predominantly on-site in Berlin, ideally 5 days per week.
Why Join?
- Join as one of the founding engineers, not employee #200.
- Meaningful equity participation and long-term upside.
- Direct influence over the product, architecture and technical roadmap.
- Work side-by-side with the founders.
- Build an AI-native product from its earliest stages.
- Significant autonomy and technical ownership.
- Opportunity to shape the engineering culture and future team.
- Work in-person with a highly ambitious team in Berlin.
- Scope for your responsibilities to grow significantly as the company scales.
This is particularly suited to engineers who have already experienced startup or founding environments and want their next role to give them considerably more ownership, influence and upside.
If you're a German-speaking AI Engineer or Software Engineer in Berlin and want to build from the ground up, please apply for a confidential discussion.
AI Futures Ltd | Filling the AI Skills Gap®