Founding Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE

Join a fast-moving, early-stage cleantech startup at the intersection of AI, electricity trading, and industrial decarbonisation as its first engineering hire. Working directly alongside the CTO, you will own the technical foundation of a platform that optimises Power-to-Heat assets in real time — trading electricity across short-term markets (Day-ahead, Intraday, Control power) and dispatching automated control signals to industrial heat generation facilities.

This is a rare opportunity to shape architecture, culture, and product direction from day one in a mission-driven company targeting one of industry's most stubborn decarbonisation challenges: process heat.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Design, build, and operate a highly available, fault-tolerant cloud infrastructure that supports 24/7 asset steering and high-frequency trading on short-term electricity markets.
• Develop and maintain interfaces to electricity markets (Day-ahead, Intraday, Control power) and to on-site steering hardware.
• Expand the backtesting environment to validate customer configurations, new trading algorithms, and additional asset types.
• Train, deploy, and monitor electricity trading models in production, ensuring reliability and continuous performance improvement.
• In your first quarter: build a new asset type in the backtesting environment, design the cloud architecture for live operations, and develop a deep understanding of customers and their energy needs.
• Collaborate closely with the CTO and cross-functional stakeholders in a lean, high-velocity startup environment.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Required

• Proven experience designing and operating cloud infrastructure for 24/7 live operations — high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability are non-negotiable.
• Hands-on experience building or expanding backtesting environments for trading algorithms and diverse asset types.
• Experience training, deploying, and monitoring trading models in production environments.
• Familiarity with electricity markets (spot, intraday, ancillary services) and the ability to design robust market interfaces.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills; comfortable working as a senior technical voice in a small, fast-paced team.

Nice to Have

• Background in Power-to-Heat, demand-response, or flexible industrial assets.
• Prior experience at an energy trading tech company, flexibility aggregator, or similar (e.g. in the virtual power plant or smart energy space).
• Comfort working on-site in Munich, Germany.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

• Competitive founding-team compensation (salary + meaningful equity).
• Outsized technical ownership and influence at the ground floor of a high-impact startup.
• Direct collaboration with experienced co-founders in a mission-driven environment.

LOCATION

Based in Munich, Germany. On-site presence expected. Visa sponsorship is not available — candidates must already hold the right to work in Germany.