Technical Co-Founder

About the Role A pre-seed B2B SaaS startup is building an AI-powered platform that automates the end-to-end lifecycle of public procurement and tender participation for architectural and planning offices in the DACH region. The product handles everything from automated tender discovery and requirements analysis to GDPR-compliant concept generation and document submission. We are looking for a Technical Co-Founder to join as the third founding team member. You will own the technical vision and implementation from the ground up — shaping system architecture, data and model pipelines, and the product itself. This is a genuine co-founder role with significant equity, not an employee position. What You'll Do Design and build a GDPR-compliant system architecture hosted in EU cloud environments (e.g., AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI on Frankfurt or equivalent EU regions). Build the core AI engine that generates complete, compelling proposal concepts from structured company and project data. Develop and maintain a reference database for references, certificates, and CVs, and integrate them dynamically into generated concepts. Implement entity resolution, reliability scoring, and confidence quantification across the data pipeline. Work deeply in AI/ML (LLMs, RAG, NLP) and/or broadly across full-stack product engineering depending on your strengths. Help set technical priorities and make architectural decisions within a small, fast-moving founding team. Contribute to business strategy during the pre-seed phase alongside your technical responsibilities. What We're Looking For Must-haves (dealbreakers): 5+ years of experience in product/engineering roles delivering AI-powered software with LLM, NLP, and/or RAG capabilities. Hands-on experience designing GDPR-compliant architectures in EU cloud environments, particularly for NLP/LLM data handling. Prior experience as a technical founder or technical lead building an AI-first product from zero with full end-to-end ownership. Required: Strong experience with LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and NLP integration. Full-stack development capability with a track record of shipping production-ready AI-enabled products. Genuine founder mentality — you want to build a company, not just complete tickets. Pragmatic, shipping-focused working style. Willingness to join as a co-founder with equity-heavy compensation during the pre-seed phase. Strongly preferred: Experience with enterprise data pipelines and secure data handling in EU cloud environments (DSGVO/GDPR context). Familiarity with German procurement law context (VgV, HOAI) or public sector workflows is a plus. German language proficiency. Based in Berlin or willing to work hybrid/remote within the DACH region. Compensation & Benefits Equity: 15–20% co-founder equity with a standard four-year vesting schedule and a one-year cliff. Compensation is currently equity-weighted given the pre-seed stage; cash salary will grow as the company raises and scales. Direct influence over product, architecture, and company direction from day one. Location Preferred: Berlin, Germany (on-site). Hybrid or remote within the DACH region considered for the right candidate. Visa sponsorship: Not available — candidates must already have the right to work in Germany / the EU.