Founding AI Engineer

• Location: Berlin Germany
• Work Policy: On-site; 0 home-office days; relocation support offered
• Work Experience: Minimum 1 year of experience
• Language Requirement: English C1
• Employment Type: Full-time
• Skills Required: Engineering Management AWS Python PostgreSQL
• Industry: AI Motion Design/Video Technology
• Positions Available: 1

Company Mission

Video is the most effective medium but video creators waste countless hours animating seconds of content. Motion design tools like After Effects require mastering complex user interfaces turning creative work into button-clicking hell. Were starting with motion design because its the most painful and expensive part of video creation.

They are the first AI motion designers that create professional animations through conversation. Unlike video-gen tools they generate code-based animations where every parameter can be fine-tuned through prompts or on-canvas editing giving users the control of After Effects with the simplicity of Lovable.

Tasks

• Build and optimize AI systems that generate high-quality animations following core motion-design principles (easing non-linear movement visual hierarchy) Develop comprehensive evaluation frameworks to assess animation quality combining automated metrics with expert validation from motion designers
• Partner with motion designers and marketers to translate professional design knowledge into AI training data and evaluation criteria
• Design and implement fine-tuning pipelines that teach Hera domain-specific animation styles and brand guidelines
• Create feedback loops between user preferences expert input and model performance to continuously improve animation quality
• Research and prototype state-of-the-art approaches for controllable style-consistent motion-graphics generation

Requirements

• Tech Stack Their technology choices evolve with our needs. Current core technologies include TypeScript PostgreSQL GCP/AWS and our proprietary motion graphics engine. They prioritize learning velocity end-to-end delivery and adopt new languages or frameworks when they best serve our users and product goals.
• Strong ML engineering foundation experience training and fine-tuning models (diffusion models VAEs GANs) building data pipelines and implementing evaluation frameworks
• Computer-vision/graphics expertise hands-on experience with video generation image synthesis or animation-related ML projects; familiarity with motion/temporal modeling
• Systems-design experience proven track record of building end-to-end ML pipelines (data collection model training evaluation production deployment)
• Research-implementation ability ability to read and implement state-of-the-art papers; bonus for animation/motion graphics domain knowledge
• Youre hungry not just ambitious but obsessed with building something massive
• Youre entrepreneurial youve built things before and demand ownership
• You thrive in ambiguity no roadmaps no PMs just problems to solve.
• You have a growth mindset personal growth required to grow the company.
• You work like an athlete high performance consistent improvement whatever it takes attitude.
• You are willing to work in-person in Berlin (relocation support provided).
• They hire for slope not intercept trajectory matters more than credentials.
• Not a fit if youre picky about what you work on lack curiosity prefer highly structured environments think AI is hype or only want to specialize in one technology

Benefits

Core Benefits

Theyre building this team like Real Madrid: small elite with each person being a superstar. They believe they can reach $100M ARR with less than 20 people. As a founding engineer youll have:

• Life-changing equity stake
• Above-market salary
• Build a product used by thousands daily
• The chance to redefine how millions of users create video

This is a YC-backed founding role with real equity; build a consumer AI product from scratch; direct influence on tech & culture; competitive comp; work closely with visionary founders in Berlin.