Founding Engineer AI & Product Development

Flycatcher Lugano Switzerland Early-Stage Founding Team Initial Work for Equity

What we do

Flycatcher builds unsupervised anomaly detection software for industrial inspections. Our system runs on edge devices and detects defects without the need for extensive training datasets.

Incubated at the USI Startup Centre supported by the NVIDIA Inception program and funded by Venture Kick we are a small team working closely with early customers in transportation and logistics (including SBB and Contrepair) to deploy our technology in the real world.

You will be the foundation of our engineering team. We need a talent dense enough to set the technical standard for everyone we hire after you. If you dont push us to be better this isnt the right fit.

Tasks

What youll do

As part of the founding team your mission is to work elbow-to-elbow with the founders to deliver our current products to customers while building the future platform of Flycatcher. You will wear many hats and lead our engineering efforts across the full technology stack:

• Technical Discovery: Alongside executing the immediate roadmap you will collaborate closely with the founders to define our technical strategy actively figuring out the architecture and features needed for our next phase of growth.
• AI & Core Tech: Design and implement computer vision models for real-time defect detection using our Python-native stack (PyTorch timm W&B).
• Edge Deployment: Deploy and optimize models on resource-constrained hardware directly at logistics gates (NVIDIA Jetson Orin TensorRT ONNX Docker).
• Backend & Infrastructure: Build the APIs and data pipelines that connect the edge to the cloud (FastAPI PostgreSQL Celery/Redis).
• Product & Frontend: Build the web applications needed to deliver our technology to end users ( Tailwind CSS) owning features end-to-end from the core AI model straight to the clients dashboard.
• Lean Operations: Maintain lean MLOps and DevOps infrastructure that supports rapid iteration (GitHub Actions Terraform S3/MinIO).

This role requires being with us 80% of the time. We work closely together often solving problems collaboratively at the whiteboard debugging deployments on-site or in direct conversation with customers.

Requirements

What were looking for

• Technical Foundation: Strong background in computer vision and deep learning (MSc/PhD level).
• Builders Agency: You dont just wait for a Jira ticket to tell you what to do. You have a proactive attitude: you deliver whats needed today while independently identifying the problems we need to solve tomorrow.
• Full-Stack Pragmatism: Hands-on experience building web applications ( You dont need to be a UI designer but you must be able to ship functional user-facing code independently.
• Edge AI: Experience with hardware-accelerated inference and edge computing environments.
• Startup DNA: Ability to work independently think in systems and make technical decisions with limited resources. You are comfortable with the pace ambiguity and all-hands-on-deck nature of early-stage startup work.
• Language: Fluent in English (Italian and German are a plus).

Benefits

What we offer

• The Ground Floor: Meaningful equity as a core member of the founding team. You are joining right as we prepare our pre-seed round backed by strong early commercial traction.
• The Path to Full-Time: Until the round closes we operate on a flexible 80% commitment. We care about outcomes not hours. Your execution speed directly accelerates our funding timeline and the transition to a 100% full-time role with a full salary.
• Impact & Ownership: Direct ownership over Flycatchers technical direction architecture and product development.
• Early-Stage Velocity: Decisions in hours your code in production within weeks. No silos no hierarchy.
• A Culture of Builders: Built on ownership speed and intellectual honesty. We work closely together share context openly and solve problems as a team.
• Elite Ecosystem: Access to NVIDIA Inception resources and active research partnerships with IDSIA USI and SUPSI.
• The Lifestyle: Build world-class AI while living in Lugano. Lake mountains 300 days of sun. Live where others vacation.

The Endgame: The market for automated inspection is massive our deep-tech is proven and we already have tier-1 traction. Now we need the engineering foundation to scale this and put our edge nodes on thousands of logistics gates worldwide.