Founding AI Finance Engineer – Customer Zero

At Helu, finance doesn't build Excel sheets. Every manual process becomes an agent, and every agent ships live in Helu.

We're looking for the person who makes that happen: half finance lead, half product engineer, and completely obsessed with automating finance with AI. You run Helu's own finance, and you automate all of it inside our own product.

About Helu

Helu is an FP&A and xP&A platform built natively on DATEV data. Companies and their advisors use Helu to plan, report and steer their business without spreadsheet chaos.

We're backed by CommerzVentures, Atlantic Labs and Iris Capital. Our next chapter puts AI agents at the core of the product, and this role is where that starts.

The mission: Customer Zero

Helu's own finance team is Helu's first customer. Everything we do manually in finance today gets automated, and it gets automated in Helu, not next to it.

The loop you'll run, again and again:

1. Pick a manual finance process, such as preparatory bookkeeping, month-end close or ARR reporting.

2. Prototype an agent with Claude in days, not quarters.

3. Run it on our own books until it's reliable.

4. Ship it live in Helu, so our customers get it too.

What works for us becomes product. What doesn't, you learn from before any customer sees it.

What you'll do

• Own Helu's internal finance. Bookkeeping preparation, month-end close, billing and ARR reporting, cash management, and reporting to investors and our advisory board.

• Automate every manual step. Map how each process really runs, then replace it with agents. First up: an agent for preparatory bookkeeping on DATEV data.

• Build POCs fast. Use Claude, tool use and MCP to prototype agents and test them on real numbers within days.

• Ship them live in Helu. Work with product and engineering to turn POCs into production features, and write the code yourself when that's faster.

• Shape the agent roadmap. Be the voice of the finance user in product decisions, because you are one.

• Measure the impact. Track hours of manual work removed, close duration and accuracy, and make the numbers go the right way.

What you bring

• Deep finance and accounting know-how. You might be a bookkeeper, a tax advisor (Steuerberater), or come from controlling or FP&A. Ideally you know both worlds, accounting and planning, really well: how a close works, what a clean P&L looks like, and where the manual pain sits.

• You know the German finance tool landscape. DATEV, Moss, Candis, Tabula and the rest. You know what each tool does well, where the gaps are and how they connect to DATEV, so you know where Helu's agents should take over.

• You've already built agents. You've automated finance work with LLMs, and your POCs actually ran on real data.

• Enough code to ship. Python or TypeScript, SQL and APIs. You don't need to be a senior software engineer, but you get things into production.

• An obsession with automation. If you do something manually twice, it bothers you. The third time, there's an agent for it.

• Ownership and speed. You'd rather launch something imperfect on Friday than present a perfect plan next month.

• Language. Fluent English. German is a strong plus, since our customers and DATEV live in the DACH world.

Nice to have: built MCP servers, experience writing evals for agents, startup finance background.

What we offer

• A founding role. You define how an AI-native finance function works, at Helu and for our customers.

• Direct line to the CEO. No layers, fast decisions, real ownership.

• Your work ships. What you build runs on our books first and then in front of customers.

• The best tools. Full access to Claude and the AI stack you need.

• Location: Vienna, hybrid.

Open points to fill in: salary range, employee participation, start date.

How to apply

Skip the cover letter. Show us one finance process you've automated: a short write-up, a Loom, a repo or a screenshot. Tell us what it replaced and how much time it saved.