Founding Staff Engineer

About the role

As a Founding Staff Engineer, you will be the technical backbone of Mercura's engineering team across multiple products and development streams. This is a deeply hands‑on role for engineers who lead by doing, writing production code, solving the hardest architectural problems, and directly improving the people around them.

• Technical Leadership in Code:
  Own the most complex and highest‑leverage engineering work across Mercura's product suite – building core systems, shared frameworks, and critical infrastructure that other engineers build on top of.
• Cross‑Product Architecture:
  Define and evolve architecture decisions across multiple products, preventing long‑term dead‑ends.
• Hands‑On Execution:
  Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping code, leading by example.
• Engineering Quality:
  Eliminate technical debt through refactoring abstractions and raising reliability standards across all teams.
• Technical Mentorship:
  Elevate engineers through code review, pairing, and direct feedback.
• AI Systems:
  Contribute to the architecture and implementation of AI capabilities – from LLM pipelines to data infrastructure at the intersection of performance and product quality.

• Learn to build a company:
  Over five Mercura alumni have founded their own companies and raised millions after their time with us. You’ll take on real responsibility and gain hands‑on experience in a high‑growth startup.
• Guaranteed career advancement opportunities in a rapidly growing team.
• An ambitious team that feels like family and sees their work as more than just a job.
• Real shares in our company with the most favorable tax treatment – no VSOP/ESOP.
• Free team dinner (up to 4 times per week).
• Urban Sports Club  membership and access to a company bike – join team workouts three times per week.
• Easy relocation to Munich: our office is located in the Werk1 Startup Incubator, where you can rent a 1‑bedroom apartment next to the office for just €800 per month.
• Access to any AI or productivity tools you need.

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of solving genuinely hard technical problems in production.
• Deep expertise across the stack – strong in backend systems, APIs, and infrastructure, comfortable in frontend when needed (Python, React, Type Script).
• Proven experience designing and evolving systems across multiple products and teams.
• Experience improving system performance, reliability, and scalability at scale.
• Cloud & Dev Ops fluency: containerization (Docker), cloud infrastructure (Azure, AWS, GCP), infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Experience building or integrating AI systems, LLMs, or large‑scale data pipelines is a strong plus.

• Deep technical ownership: You hold the bar, notice slipping, and act without being asked.
• Leads through doing: Your authority comes from output and judgment, not title. You mentor by being the best engineer in the room.
• Multiplier mentality: Measure success by how much better the team ships after working with you.
• Mission‑driven: Your work is part of how you define yourself. You’re fully committed to ambitious goals amid uncertainty.
• Pragmatic and decisive: You know when to go fast or slow, make architectural calls with incomplete information, and stand behind them.
• You want to work in‑person in Munich with a higher intensity than a 9‑5 job.

• Sean – Co‑Founder & CTO, Silver Medallist at the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO)
• Kolya – former SWE at SF‑based startup Etleap
• Gabriel – built Maastricht University’s course selection system;
  Oxford graduate
• Admir – Bronze Medallist at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)
• Nico – former engineering at SaaS startups Luminovo & Fides
• Rohan Ramanath – General Manager AI Product at Nubank, former co‑founder Hyperplane
• Daniel Ribeiro Silva – Senior Director of ML at Nubank, former co‑founder Hyperplane