Software/AI Engineer (Full-Stack)

📩 Interested?

Click the "Apply now" button on this LinkedIn ad. It will take you to our full job posting on Notion, where you'll find all the details and the official application form. We respond to every applicant within a few days.

Berlin (hybrid, ≥3 days in office) · English or German · EXIST-funded, raising within 3 months

We're a 3-person founding team hiring our first engineer. This is a full-stack / AI role with a real path to founding engineer — if we grow well together, you move up, get founding-engineer equity, and the title that goes with it.

🧭 What we're building

Sokra is the adaptive learning platform for schools in the DACH region — and soon beyond. We build curriculum-aligned, multimodal learning paths so students move at their own pace and pick how they reach the goal. As knowledge delivery becomes personalized, teachers get back the part of the job only they can do: reading the room, spotting who needs help, giving every student real attention.

📈 Proof, not promises

• Pilots live in German classrooms today
• International rollouts in motion
• Publishers (Cornelsen & Klett) in active conversation
• EXIST-funded; BPW Berlin business plan in submission
• Closing our first round within the next ~3 months

🛠️ What you'll do

• Own features end-to-end: Next.js / TypeScript frontend, Python backend, LLM pipelines
• Build and harden our RAG + knowledge-graph pipeline: ingestion, chunking, retrieval, evals
• Ship low-latency streaming, safety guardrails, and graceful degradation that survive a real classroom
• Build the multi-tenant, DSGVO-compliant foundation schools trust us with
• Set up the infra to iterate fast: prompt versioning, feature flags, A/B tests, AI QA
• Sit in user research, see your code hit a classroom the same week, iterate

🧠 Who you are

• Strong full-stack engineer with taste. You leave systems better than you found them.
• Zero-to-one builder. You're at your best in ambiguity, with sharp product sense and an eye for detail.
• Comfortable with LLM systems in production: RAG, streaming, evals, context management.
• Founder mindset: you see what's needed, propose a plan, ship it.
• High standards, low ego. You disagree on the merits, commit fast, and humility is a feature.
• Clear communicator — written and verbal.
• You knew how to code before Cursor — and you've learned to use AI to multiply your output.
• Bonus: DSGVO-aware engineering, real-time systems at scale, DevOps/IaC, strong testing instincts.

🎯 What success looks like

• 3 months: core platform stable for pilot schools, fast/safe tutor interactions, weekly shipping cadence.
• 6 months: pilots describe Sokra as fast and reliable; at least one core system refactored from real usage; iteration infra in place.
• 12 months: 50+ concurrent classrooms supported, strong test coverage where it matters, you've grown a domain specialty that becomes a moat.

💸 The honest pitch on comp

We're scholarship-funded today. That means we can offer the EXIST excess-scholarship rate now — not a market salary. We'll share the exact number on our first call.

In return:

• Defined salary step-up on closing our round (within ~3 months) — written into your offer.
• An open path forward at the 6-month mark.

One of three things happens, openly discussed:

1. Strong mutual fit at founding-engineer level → you become our founding engineer with real equity, vesting backdated to your start date.
2. Good fit but not at founding-engineer level → no equity, but a meaningful market-rate salary and a clear seat on the team.
3. Not the right fit → we part ways cleanly at the end of the EXIST stipend, no surprises.

• A seat at the table from day one, and decisions that match.

If you can earn more at a FAANG or a Series B today, you probably can. This role is for someone who'd rather be early enough for it to count, learn at start-up speed, and ship work that lands in real classrooms — in Germany this year, worldwide next.

👥 Team & location

Three of us today: Julius (CEO — GTM, fundraising, hiring), Fabian (CTO — main engineer), Maxim (CPO — product, teachers). Based in Berlin. We move fast, keep meetings minimal, write things down, and like each other. We meet up often.

Berlin-based, hybrid (≥3 days in office). Work permit for Germany required. Fully remote (Germany / EU time zones) only for exceptional candidates and not in the first 6 months. Working language English or German.

📩 Process

2–3 rounds: intro → technical deep dive → working session with the team. Decision within 1–2 weeks of the intro call.

🚀 How to apply

Hit the "Apply now" button on this LinkedIn ad. It will open our full job posting on Notion, where you can officially apply by sending us your GitHub, CV, and a few lines on why this role. We respond to every applicant within a few days.

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Sokra welcomes applications from people of all genders, ages, and backgrounds, including FLINT individuals, people with migration backgrounds, and BIPOC.