Founding Product Engineer

Role Summary

This is a founding-level product engineering role at a fast-growing, European-headquartered startup building an AI-powered phone assistant for small and medium-sized businesses. The platform automates inbound and outbound calls, appointment scheduling, customer service, and other communication workflows — with a strong focus on the German-speaking market and a privacy-first, data-sovereign architecture built in Europe.

You'll join a lean, high-ownership engineering team at an early stage (recently closed a Seed / Series A round backed by prominent European and global investors) and have a direct impact on product direction, architecture, and customer outcomes. The company has grown from a handful of people to ~50 in under two years and is continuing to scale rapidly.

Native-level German proficiency is a firm requirement for this role. You must be able to work with CET time-zone overlap. An optional office in Vienna, Austria is available.

Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end — from hypothesis and prototype through to production release — for a product used by thousands of companies across Europe.
• Lead product discovery by designing and running rapid experiments to validate ideas before committing to large-scale builds.
• Maintain close, recurring contact with customers, partners, and the Sales team to surface real pain points and translate them into product decisions.
• Design and implement tracking and analytics to support data-driven iteration.
• Build across the full stack, driving architecture decisions through to release.
• Prioritise pragmatic solutions that balance speed of validation with long-term scalability.
• Take radical ownership of initiatives and move them forward autonomously, without waiting for sign-offs.

Requirements

Must-haves (dealbreakers)

• 3+ years of product engineering experience delivering end-to-end software features.
• Strong full-stack proficiency: Node.js, TypeScript, NestJS, and React .
• Native-level German fluency (Deutsch auf Muttersprachniveau) — non-negotiable.
• Experience integrating software with external systems such as CRMs, calendar apps, and databases.
• Ability to gather customer feedback and translate pain points into product decisions in collaboration with customers, partners, and sales.
• Comfort identifying, tracking, and analysing relevant metrics to drive data-driven decisions.
• End-to-end development experience — from architecture choices to production deployment.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating LLMs or building AI-powered product features (e.g. OpenAI or similar).
• Familiarity with GDPR compliance and EU AI Act considerations in product development.
• Experience working in a remote-first, asynchronous collaboration environment.
• Background in early-stage or high-growth startup environments.
• Salary: €80,000 – €120,000 annually, depending on experience.
• Equity: Meaningful equity stake as a founding-level hire.
• Remote-first culture with optional access to a Vienna office.
• High-ownership, low-bureaucracy environment with direct impact on product and company direction.
• Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
• Fully remote, with required overlap during Central European Time (CET) working hours. Candidates based in Germany or Austria are preferred. An optional co-working space/office in Vienna, Austria is available.