Founding Engineer, NLP Systems and Infrastructure

ABOUT THE ROLE Join an early-stage AI and dual-use technology company as its first technical hire. You will turn a research-grade prototype into reliable production software for enterprise and public-sector users, with broad ownership and the opportunity to build an engineering team. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Architect production systems spanning orchestrated data and NLP pipelines, AI/ML integrations, CI/CD, observability, and cloud or on-premises deployment. - Set and own the engineering roadmap, balancing delivery speed, quality, and security. - Build and validate the first production release hands-on, including infrastructure and security decisions. - Hire and lead an engineering team while setting technical direction, engineering standards, and a positive team culture. - Work closely with company leadership and users to iterate on the product. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - At least 5 years building and operating production data-intensive or NLP systems, including ingestion, deduplication, entity resolution, queues, and orchestrated pipelines. - Strong Python skills and production engineering practices, including automated testing, CI/CD, and monitoring for data and model drift. - Experience with PostgreSQL and at least one graph database, vector store, or search engine, plus embeddings, vector search, and language model integrations. - Experience managing language model costs, versioning, and non-deterministic behavior. - Ability to build clean APIs and functional analyst-facing interfaces using React, Vue, or similar technologies. - Experience owning production architecture, observability, and cloud and on-premises deployment options. Docker, Kubernetes, or Helm experience is useful. - Open-web or platform data acquisition experience and awareness of related legal and ethical considerations are valued. - Willingness and eligibility to obtain a security clearance in the near future. German language skills and early-stage startup experience are helpful. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Base salary: €60,000 to €120,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is available. LOCATION On-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.