AI Engineering Lead

About Mercura

You know someone great? Introduce them to [email protected] and get up to €10,000 in referral bonuses if we hire them!* Mercura is building AI software for the backbone of our economy. We are one of the fastest growing companies from YC’s W25 batch and raised a heavily oversubscribed round at one of the highest valuations in our cohort. After surpassing $1M in ARR in under a year, we are looking for team members ready to go all-in to help us reach our next milestone: $10M ARR by the end of 2026 . One of our co-founders, Lukas, grew up in a trades family that has been active in the construction industry for over 115 years. Having worked on the construction site himself, he learned first-hand how slow and manual quoting still is in the industry. In an era where AI becomes ubiquitous, we set out on a deeply personal mission: bring AI to the backbone of our economy - to the companies that keep our world running.

About the role

Skills: Next.js, Python, React, TypeScript, Machine Learning, Docker, Natural Language Processing, PostgreSQL

Mercura is building AI software for the backbone of our economy. We are one of the fastest growing companies from YC’s W25 batch and raised a heavily oversubscribed round at one of the highest valuations in our cohort. After surpassing $1M in ARR in under a year, we are looking for team members ready to go all-in to help us reach our next milestone: $10M ARR by the end of 2026. One of our co-founders, Lukas, grew up in a trades family that has been active in the construction industry for over 115 years. Having worked on the construction site himself, he learned first-hand how slow and manual quoting still is in the industry. In an era where AI becomes ubiquitous, we set out on a deeply personal mission: bring AI to the backbone of our economy - to the companies that keep our world running.

As the AI Engineering Lead , you will play a key role in architecting and building complex AI systems end-to-end. This is a hands-on leadership role for engineers with high-agency and strong technical depth . We’re looking for experienced builders with a strong product mindset and a track record of shipping complex AI systems. If you are an experienced builder who thrives at the intersection of AI, ML, data engineering, and full-stack development - this is your opportunity to set the technical direction, mentor others, and shape how users interact with AI.

What you will be working on

Own the architecture and design of AI systems

Collaborate with and lead other stellar engineers across the full stack

Build, deploy and optimize AI agents end-to-end

Work with embeddings and fine-tune LLMs for classification and reranking

Optimize algorithms for product search

Apply RLHF & DPO to align LLMs with human feedback

Build data pipelines to process large-scale unstructured data efficiently

Make our backend scalable, stable and efficient

What we're looking for

We are looking for senior engineers with a strong background in SWE, AI & ML - and the capability to lead the team and grow into a founding engineer role.

Technical skillset: Strong experience with NLP, LLMs, Embeddings, ML, and AI-powered applications

Experience with full-stack software engineering (React, Typescript, Python)

Proven track record of architecting and building complex, production-grade AI systems

Cloud & DevOps : Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), cloud infrastructure (Azure/AWS/GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform).

Commitment & Mindset: High agency & initiative : You develop new ideas and drive them in execution under minimal guidance

Mission-driven : Mercura is part of your life’s mission, and you are willing to make sacrifices to prioritize your job over (almost) everything else

Product mindset: You demonstrate product thinking on a deep level and solve problems end-to-end

You’re excited to iterate quickly and build software in a fast-paced startup environment

You want to work in-person in Munich with a higher intensity than in a 9-5 job

Leadership & Communication: You have experience in leading engineering teams as a senior/staff/lead engineer

You’re one of the strongest engineers in the team and make everyone else better

Everyone can come to you for advice on how to fix their hardest problems

Clients respect your presence & technical expertise

Company Perks

Free team dinner (up to 4x/week)

UrbanSportsClub membership - join our team workouts 3x/week

Easy relocation to Munich — our office is located in the Werk1 Startup Incubator , where you can rent a 1-bedroom apartment right next to the office for just €750/month

Real shares in our company with the most favorable tax treatment - no VSOP/ESOP

Access to any AI or productivity tools you need

The target total compensation (cash+bonus+equity) for this position is €90,000-€200,000 annually. Actual offers and compensation are based on specific job duties, experience, performance, total rewards structure, and other considerations.

Technology

Software Stack: Typescript, Python, React, Next, Docker, Terraform, Postgres

AI Stack: Vector databases, LLMs, Embeddings, observability & evals

Interview Process

Step 1: Intro call Casual intro meeting with one of the founders to get to know each other and introduce Mercura

Step 2: Technical interview 💡 At Mercura, we value our applicants' time. That's why we compensate you with €50 if we ask you to complete a take-home challenge. The technical interview consists of two parts: A take-home exercise, including a short presentation and a live-coding session. A system design interview. For the take-home exercise, we’d provide you with a task. You’ll have 2–3 hours to complete it, focusing on data and AI engineering (e.g., NLP, embeddings, LLMs). The challenge will be based on a practical problem we’ve encountered in our day-to-day work, so it should give you a realistic sense of what the role involves. Later, you’ll present your results to us. The presentation will include a brief algorithmic live-coding challenge, similar to a competitive programming task.

Step 3: Personal Fit Meet another co-founder to get a feel for our culture and working style.

Step 4: On-Site Work alongside the entire team for a day on-site from our Munich office to fully immerse yourself in our culture and collaboration style. This on-site will be paid.

Step 5: Reference checks Please provide 2–3 references so we can gather insights into your strengths and working style.

Step 6: Offer If we see a great fit, you will get an offer, including a competitive compensation package with equity participation.