Founding Product Engineer

About the Role This is a founding-level product engineering role at a fast-growing, European-headquartered startup building an AI-powered phone assistant for small and medium-sized businesses. The platform automates inbound and outbound calls, appointment scheduling, customer service, and other communication workflows — with a strong focus on the German-speaking market and a privacy-first, data-sovereign architecture built in Europe. You'll join a lean, high-ownership engineering team at an early stage (recently closed a Seed / Series A round backed by prominent European and global investors) and have a direct impact on product direction, architecture, and customer outcomes. The company has grown from a handful of people to ~50 in under two years and is continuing to scale rapidly. Native-level German proficiency is a firm requirement for this role. You must be able to work with CET time-zone overlap. An optional office in Vienna, Austria is available. What You'll Do Own features end-to-end — from hypothesis and prototype through to production release — for a product used by thousands of companies across Europe. Lead product discovery by designing and running rapid experiments to validate ideas before committing to large-scale builds. Maintain close, recurring contact with customers, partners, and the Sales team to surface real pain points and translate them into product decisions. Design and implement tracking and analytics to support data-driven iteration. Build across the full stack, driving architecture decisions through to release. Prioritise pragmatic solutions that balance speed of validation with long-term scalability. Take radical ownership of initiatives and move them forward autonomously, without waiting for sign-offs. What We're Looking For Must-haves (dealbreakers): 3+ years of product engineering experience delivering end-to-end software features. Strong full-stack proficiency: Node.js, TypeScript, NestJS, and React . Native-level German fluency (Deutsch auf Muttersprachniveau) — non-negotiable. Required: Experience integrating software with external systems such as CRMs, calendar apps, and databases. Ability to gather customer feedback and translate pain points into product decisions in collaboration with customers, partners, and sales. Comfort identifying, tracking, and analysing relevant metrics to drive data-driven decisions. End-to-end development experience — from architecture choices to production deployment. Nice to have: Experience integrating LLMs or building AI-powered product features (e.g. OpenAI or similar). Familiarity with GDPR compliance and EU AI Act considerations in product development. Experience working in a remote-first, asynchronous collaboration environment. Background in early-stage or high-growth startup environments. Compensation & Benefits Salary: €80,000 – €120,000 annually, depending on experience. Equity: Meaningful equity stake as a founding-level hire. Remote-first culture with optional access to a Vienna office. High-ownership, low-bureaucracy environment with direct impact on product and company direction. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role. Location Fully remote, with required overlap during Central European Time (CET) working hours. Candidates based in Germany or Austria are preferred. An optional co-working space/office in Vienna, Austria is available.