Culture and Community Manager

About the Role We're a small, ambitious deeptech startup in Berlin working at the intersection of AI, robotics, and materials science — building technology with the potential to reshape the energy sector and beyond. Our team brings together engineers, scientists, and operators who move fast and care deeply about what they're building. We're looking for a Culture and Community Manager to lead the intentional creation and upkeep of our internal culture. This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role for someone who thrives on genuine human connection, operates well without a detailed playbook, and finds meaning in making a hardworking team feel seen, supported, and energized. You'll work closely with founders and across the full team to build rituals, surface sentiment early, coordinate recruiting outreach, and own the people-facing problems that don't have a clear owner yet. What You'll Do Design and run weekly rituals, team socials, monthly activities, celebrations, and quarterly offsites. Create authentic traditions and shared experiences that feel distinctly ours — not generic or performative. Make all-hands and collective meetings more energetic, interactive, and participatory. Build trusted relationships across the company and maintain a continuous pulse on team sentiment. Notice disengagement or frustration early and proactively offer support or escalate when needed. Review monthly team updates to spot recurring themes, tone changes, or unmet asks — and follow through. Source and reach out to candidates via LinkedIn, communities, referrals, and creative channels. Screen candidates for motivation, values, judgment, and cultural contribution; support interview coordination. Own practical, people-facing problems that lack a clear owner and create workable solutions independently. Maintain lightweight people-ops: onboarding experiences, trackers, follow-ups, and internal documentation. Coordinate reliably across founders, employees, vendors, and external partners. What We're Looking For Required: Minimum 2 years of experience in community management, people operations, or a closely related field. Demonstrated ability to own and solve people-facing operational problems without a predefined playbook. Experience screening candidates for motivation, values, and cultural contribution as part of an interview process. Cross-functional collaboration experience — comfortable working alongside founders, engineers, scientists, vendors, and external partners. You'll stand out if you have: Background in employee experience, recruiting, events, hospitality, startup ops, or university communities. Strong emotional judgment and the ability to handle sensitive conversations with care and discretion. A startup mindset: high agency, low ego, comfort with ambiguity, and a bias toward speed and impact. AI-native curiosity: you build workflows, experiment with tools, write prompts, or create lightweight automations to work faster — no engineering background required. The social energy to rally reluctant participants without ever making culture feel forced. The candor to give founders honest, practical reads on team sentiment. Location & Work Arrangement This role is on-site in Berlin, Germany . We work together in person — it's core to how we build culture. Visa sponsorship is not available ; candidates must have existing work authorization in Germany. About the Company We're a well-funded seed-stage deeptech startup building an AI-driven platform to dramatically accelerate the discovery of advanced materials — particularly for the energy sector. Our platform combines physics-informed AI, autonomous lab robotics, and large-scale experimental data to compress decades of R&D into years. We're a small team (under 65 people) with deep scientific and engineering talent, backed by established European and international investors.