Founding Engineer, NLP Systems & Infrastructure

About the Role Join an early-stage AI and deep-tech team as its first technical hire, turning a research-grade prototype into reliable production software for enterprise and public-sector use. You will lead architecture and delivery hands-on, then build and manage the engineering team. What You'll Do Design and own production architecture for orchestrated data and NLP pipelines, AI/ML integrations, CI/CD, observability, and cloud or on-premises deployment. Set the engineering roadmap while balancing delivery speed, quality, and security. Build the initial production system hands-on and validate infrastructure and security decisions. Hire and manage an engineering team, setting technical direction, standards, and a constructive team culture. Work closely with founders 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. Python as your primary language, with experience in automated testing, CI/CD, and observability, including data and model drift monitoring. Production experience with PostgreSQL and at least one graph database, vector store, or search engine. Experience with embeddings, vector search, and language model integrations, including managing cost, versioning, and non-determinism. Ability to build clean APIs and functional analyst-facing interfaces using React, Vue, or similar technologies. Experience architecting production systems with cloud and on-premises deployment options. Docker, Kubernetes, or Helm experience is helpful. Willingness and eligibility to obtain German security clearance. Eligibility is subject to German clearance requirements. Experience with open-web or platform data acquisition, early-stage startups, or German-language work is beneficial. Compensation & Benefits Base salary: €60,000 to €120,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is available. Location On-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.