Software Engineer (Intern Working Student)

acemate is building an AI learning & teaching platform for higher and further education institutions. We have strong traction secured funding and are entering an exciting growth phase. Were looking for a passionate Software Engineer (Intern / Working Student) to drive our product forward and help us scale.

About acemate

Founded in 2024 acemate has quickly become the leading AI learning platform for higher and further education trusted by top-tier institutions across four countries including TU Munich University of Cologne WHU and the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (IHKs).

• Our Mission: Democratizing access to personalized learning. We dont believe that AI will replace educators. Instead we empower them to design and deliver personalized learning experiences at scale.
• Our Growth: Weve raised pre-seed funding and are growing rapidly. While we focus on higher and further education in the DACH area today were already expanding into new regions and markets.
• Our Culture: Were a young driven team passionate about tackling the toughest challenges in education. We embrace builder culture and minimize scheduled meetings for ad-hoc discussions and maximized focus on coding and creating.

Tasks

One role a few possible directions

Most of this role is product engineering: full-stack work on the features students and educators use every day. But wed rather shape it around the person than force everyone through the same slot. Depending on where youre strong and what you want to get better at you could lean towards:

• Product: Talking to users building features end to end making AI features feel genuinely useful rather than like another chatbot wrapper.
• Mobile: Were building our React Native app and theres plenty to own if thats where your interest is.
• Platform and architecture: Effect clean architecture type-driven design the AI pipelines behind everything. If thats the part you find interesting theres real depth here.

You dont need to know which one you want on day one. Most people find out by building something.

What Youll Be Working On

Youll take ownership of your work and solve real user problems directly. Working alongside the founders and the engineering team youll connect what users actually need how we design it and how we technically pull it off.

• No endless spec docs: Instead of writing long requirements youll speak directly with users to find their pain points and immediately start coding a solution.
• Production prototyping: Forget spending hours on Figma mocks when you can just prompt a functional UI quickly. Youll test your ideas by pushing live code rather than sharing static designs.
• Data-backed intuition: Youll use a mix of user empathy and live analytics (PostHog) to find where people get stuck and fix it right away.
• Real ownership: Youll take features from top to bottom handling the architecture the actual coding and the final deployment. Your code goes to real students at real institutions not to a sandbox.
• Ship fast learn faster: Youll push updates out early to see how users react and use that data to iterate.

Past examples of things you might build:

• A Duolingo-inspired daily quiz system that keeps students engaged with their university materials.
• Complex AI pipelines designed to pull text and visuals from various documents and map those topics into knowledge graphs.
• A custom authorization engine built to manage the increasing complexity of multiple institutional environments.

Tech Stack:

• Frontend: TypeScript Tailwind CSS
• Mobile: TypeScript React Native Expo
• Backend: Effect-based TypeScript services
• Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL)
• Infrastructure: Cloudflare (Workers Pages Workflows R2 KV) Google Cloud (Gemini Cloud Run)
• Tools: Sentry Langfuse PostHog Stripe

If you dont know every single tool listed here from day one thats completely fine. We trust your ability to pick things up quickly and learn new frameworks as we build.

Requirements

What Were Looking For

• You can already build things: Youve built and shipped something real whether thats a side project a university project that went further than it had to or previous work at a company. We care about what youve made not which semester youre in.
• Commitment to excellence: Youre driven to go above and beyond when it matters.
• Curiosity and adaptability: Eager to learn new technologies and stay open to innovation.
• Balanced AI approach: You knew how to code before Cursor and Claude Code but understand how to leverage them effectively.
• Passion and purpose: High identification with our mission to transform education.

Were flexible on hours and work around your lectures and exam periods. Well agree on a setup that works for both sides.

Benefits

Benefits

• A nice office in the heart of Berlin with snacks drinks and an office dog
• Working in a small but driven team built around performance and learning
• Flexible environment with a high degree of autonomy
• Real ownership from week one not ticket work on the side of the roadmap
• Frequent team events and acemate parties!