Technical Co-Founder

About the Role A pre-seed AI SaaS startup is looking for a Technical Co-Founder to join as the third member of the founding team. The company is building an AI-powered platform that automates the end-to-end process of public procurement and tender participation for architectural and planning offices in the DACH region — from tender discovery and requirements analysis through to GDPR-compliant, auto-generated proposal documents. This is a true co-founder role: you will own the full technical implementation, help shape company strategy, and have a direct impact on market adoption and growth from day one. What You'll Do Design and build a GDPR-compliant system architecture hosted in the EU (e.g., on AWS Bedrock or Vertex AI in Frankfurt or equivalent EU regions). Build the core AI engine that generates complete, compelling proposal concepts from client data. Develop and maintain a reference database for project references, certificates, and CVs, and integrate them intelligently into generated documents. Implement entity resolution, reliability scoring, and confidence quantification across the data pipeline. Work deeply in AI/ML (LLMs, RAG, NLP) and/or broadly across product engineering, depending on your strengths. Define and drive technical priorities alongside the founding team during the pre-seed phase. Contribute to product strategy, architecture decisions, and business development as a full founding team member. What We're Looking For Must-haves (dealbreakers): 5+ years of experience in product/engineering roles delivering AI-powered software with LLM, NLP, or RAG capabilities. Hands-on experience designing GDPR-compliant architectures in EU cloud environments (e.g., data handling for NLP/LLMs). Prior experience as a technical founder or technical lead building an AI-first product from zero, with full end-to-end ownership. Required: Strong experience with LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and NLP integration in production systems. Full-stack development capability — you can ship production-ready features across the stack for an AI-enabled product. Genuine founder mentality: you want to build a company, not just execute tickets. Willingness to join with 15–20% equity and a standard four-year vesting schedule (one-year cliff), with compensation initially weighted heavily toward equity during the pre-seed phase. German language proficiency (written and spoken) — essential for this market. Nice to have: Experience with enterprise data pipelines and secure data handling in EU cloud environments (AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI, or similar). Familiarity with German procurement law or the broader public sector / RegTech space (e.g., VgV, HOAI). A pragmatic, ship-first working style — you value progress over perfection. Compensation & Equity Equity: 15–20% co-founder equity with a four-year vesting schedule and one-year cliff. Cash compensation: Pre-seed stage; initially weighted toward equity. Cash salary will grow as funding is secured. No visa sponsorship available. Location Preferred: Berlin, Germany (on-site / hybrid). Remote within the DACH region may be considered for the right candidate.