AI Engineering Lead

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 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 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). 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: You view Mercura as a long-term commitment and your job is one of your top priorities 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 more intensity than in a 9-5 job High agency & initiative: You develop new ideas and drive them in execution under minimal guidance Mission-driven: You view Mercura as a long-term commitment and your job is one of your top priorities 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 more intensity than in a 9-5 job Leadership & Communication: You have experience in leading engineering teams as a senior/staff/lead engineer You have the potential to grow into the founding engineer role 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 experience in leading engineering teams as a senior/staff/lead engineer You have the potential to grow into the founding engineer role 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.