AI Engineer

Mercura automates quoting in the construction industry with AI agents. We rank in the top 5% of YC’s W25 batch by revenue, quadrupling our revenue in just 8 weeks. After YC, we closed a 8x oversubscribed round with top-tier investors and angels. Mercura automates quoting in the construction industry with AI agents. Our software frees sales teams from manual back-office tasks and lets them process requests in minutes instead of days. We rank in the top 5% of YC’s W25 batch by revenue, quadrupling our revenue in just 8 weeks. After YC, we closed a 8x oversubscribed round with top-tier investors and angels, and we contrinue to grow massively. As a AI Engineer, you will play a key role in building AI systems end-to-end. This is a fast-paced, hands-on role for engineers with high-agency and founder mindset. We’re looking for stellar engineers who take full ownership, thrive in uncertainty, and are willing to go the extra mile to achieve ambitious goals in a fast-paced startup environment. If you are a passionate builder who thrives at the intersection of AI, ML, data engineering, and full-stack development - this is your opportunity to shape how users interact with AI. What you will be working on Work across the full stack to 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 Work across the full stack to 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 agentic full-stack engineers with a strong background in SWE, AI & ML - and the potential to grow into the 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) Cloud & DevOps: Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), cloud infrastructure (Azure/AWS/GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform) is a plus. Strong experience with NLP, LLMs, Embeddings, ML, and AI-powered applications Experience with full-stack software engineering (React, Typescript, Python) Cloud & DevOps: Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), cloud infrastructure (Azure/AWS/GCP), and infrastructure as code (Terraform) is a plus. Commitment & Mindset: High agency & ownership: You develop new ideas and work hard to achieve something uncertain 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 High agency & ownership: You develop new ideas and work hard to achieve something uncertain 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 Leadership & Communication: You have the potential to grow into the founding engineer role You naturally take responsibility and enjoy leading teams 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 You have the potential to grow into the founding engineer role You naturally take responsibility and enjoy leading teams 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 Software Stack: Typescript, Python, React, Next, Docker, Terraform, Postgres AI Stack: Vector databases, LLMs, Embeddings, observability & evals 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: Meet the team Meet the other co-founders and team members to get a feel for our culture and working style. Step 4: Reference checks Please provide 2–3 references so we can gather insights into your strengths and working style. Step 5: Offer If we see a great fit, you will get an offer, including a competitive compensation package with equity participation.