Founding Lead Engineer — AI & Workflow Automation

Founders Factory builds and funds startups together with exceptional entrepreneurs and leading companies. Founded by experienced entrepreneurs, we combine early-stage capital with a hands-on Venture Studio team across product, engineering, growth, talent and fundraising.

We’re now building a new venture tackling one of Germany’s biggest labour-market challenges: how to find, engage and hire skilled workers at scale.

We’re looking for a hands-on Lead Engineer with founder ambitions to build the first product from scratch, with the opportunity to become the venture’s Technical Co-Founder.

The opportunity

Recruiting skilled workers is still remarkably manual. Candidates are found across fragmented channels, contacted via WhatsApp or phone, qualified one by one, matched against roles and repeatedly chased for missing information.

We believe a large part of this workflow can be fundamentally redesigned using AI, conversational interfaces and automation.

You would build the first version: from candidate acquisition and qualification to matching, follow-up and integrations into existing recruiting workflows.

What we’re looking for

• Strong full-stack engineer able to build independently from zero to working product

• Experience automating messy, real-world workflows

• Hands-on experience shipping LLM / AI-agent functionality to users

• Comfortable connecting APIs, databases, messaging tools and third-party systems

• Product-minded: you care about whether technology actually removes work and improves conversion

• High ownership and entrepreneurial ambition — whether as a founder, early engineer, freelancer or technical operator

• Familiarity with the DACH market; German strongly preferred

Particularly relevant

Experience with recruitment or HR tech, ATS/CRM integrations, WhatsApp, voice AI, n8n/Make, matching systems, marketplaces or workflow-heavy SaaS would be highly relevant.

What we offer

You’ll build the company from day one with capital and hands-on support from Founders Factory, working alongside an experienced venture team and with access to our network of founders, operators, corporate partners and investors.

This is an opportunity to build first, validate quickly and potentially step in as Technical Co-Founder of an independent venture-backed company.