AI-first Founding Engineer FMD

The engineer of yesterday is obsolete. Were looking for the engineer of tomorrow.

The way we build software has fundamentally irreversibly changed. The old playbooks are being rewritten in real-time by LLMs agents and new AI-native architectures.

At Tekkr we believe that an AI-first mindset isnt a feature; its the foundation. If your first instinct for a new problem isnt How can I leverage AI to solve this you are not right for this job. Please dont apply.

Our mission: What if your work empowered tech teams across the world

Software helps address the worlds biggest challenges from climate crisis to inefficiency in governments. However many companies and teams are bogged down by their own inefficiencies and struggle to develop technology effectively. Tekkrs mission is to empower tech teams and their leaders to achieve their full potential! Join tekkr and become a positive multiplier for techies across the globe!

We work primarily with other cutting-edge startups (Parloa Orbem Forto Vimcar...) and help them get even further ahead. So not only will you work with a kick-ass Tekkr team but also get real-life exposure to amazing customers and collaborate with their tech leadership on some of their most exciting challenges.

We have built an initial software product based on react mongoDB shadcn and modern AI-tooling (e.g. RAG langfuse ...). We are using this product to run real customer engagements and projects to deeply explore customer problems. Our goal: build something people want! We learn super-fast iterate very quickly and need your help to become even faster! Lets build this company together!

Tasks

Your mission: architect augment accelerate

This isnt a ticket-taker role. You are a Full-Stack Founding Engineer. You will co-own the product the culture and the technical vision. Your job is to find and build leverage.

• Full stack development skills ideally in the Tekkr stack: node react mongoDB
• Architect AI-native systems: You wont just add AI to an old product. You will design and build systems that start with AI. Youll build test and deploy autonomous agents RAG pipelines and LLM-powered workflows as core product components.
• Operate at 10x leverage: You will use AI as your primary co-developer not just a syntax-checker. Your first question for any task isnt How do I build this but How do I get AI to build 80% of this so I can focus on the critical 20%
• Full-spectrum ownership: Take ideas from a conversation with a customers stakeholder to a deployed AI-powered solution. You will architect design (with shadcn) build and iterate at a pace that traditional teams would call impossible.
• Shape the future: As a founding engineer your voice will directly influence our product roadmap our engineering culture and our ultimate success.

Requirements

Hard requirements:

• Full professional proficiency in English German is a plus
• Berlin-based we want to start building a local team then expand for remote work for all
• European work permit required

Who you are: the AI-first operator

We are not hiring for a list of skills. We are hiring for a mindset.

• You think in Leverage not Lines of Code. You are obsessed with efficiency. Youd rather spend two hours crafting a complex prompt-chain that saves 20 hours of manual coding than just getting it done the old way.
• You are fluent in modern AI. Youve already built non-trivial projects with LLMs. You know what RAG is and why it matters. Youve played with agentic frameworks. Youve built Simulations & Evaluations. You read AI research papers for alpha not just for fun.
• You are a pragmatic prototyper. You have a ship it mentality. You know that a 90% solution powered by AI delivered today is better than a 99% solution built manually delivered next month.
• You are a systems thinker. You understand that AI isnt just a feature; its a new unpredictable layer of the stack. You can reason about vector databases context windows and API costs just as easily as you can about a REST API.
• You are entrepreneurial. This is the core startup attitude. Youve built your own projects freelanced or run a community. You know how to finish and get real-world feedback.

Stack

We care more about your ability to learn and integrate than your mastery of one framework. Here are things we use:

• Core AI: LLM-native architectures RAG agentic systems vector databases and AI observability
• Application layer: React MongoDB.
• Design/UX: Ability to implement simple effective designs using shadcn.

Benefits

• Highly attractive equity compensation based on industry benchmarks
• Salary starting with at least 65.000/ year up to 100.000/ year
• Join a team that has already established rapport with 50 investors including Sequoia Accel Kleiner Perkins Northzone FoundersFund Index Ventures many leading German VCs like Earlybird Holtzbrinck

Team

• Tekkr is built by techies for techies!
• At our core we are in love with improvement learning and growth. We believe things can always be done better!
• You will work directly with the founder Philipp Römer who was previously VP product at forto leading the development of software solutions for global trade driving the company growth from 80 to >850 forties and achieve a 2bn$ valuation as part of fortos top management team.
• You will also work closely with Barzel Segal previously EVP Engineering at forto and long-time Silicon Valley tech leader (Workday Identified Mindjet) and Jackie Moyes (ex-VP product at Viacom and Yara)

The hiring process

• VIDEO CALL (30m) - Chat about your background to ensure the role is a good fit give you an opportunity to ask questions about Tekkr!
• FOUNDER CALL (30m) - Chat about your role as a founding engineer your motivation and the opportunities at Tekkr
• TAKE-HOME PROJECT 2-3 HR - Evaluate your technical skills and problem-solving approach through a real-life project based on the Tekkr context
• PROJECT REVIEW 1 HR - Review your project with the Tekkr tech team (Engineering & Product)

TRIAL - DAY / ONSITE IF POSSIBLE

• Our trial day is meant to simulate what working at Tekkr is like as closely as possible. We love candidates that have researched the space and come prepared with questions about Tekkr.