Staff Engineer

About Mercura

Mercura is building AI software for the backbone of our economy.

Backed by Y Combinator, we raised a heavily oversubscribed round at one of the highest valuations in our cohort. As one of Europe's fastest growing startups, we surpassed $2M in ARR in our first year. Now, 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. 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

As a Founding Staff Engineer, you will be the technical backbone of Mercura’s engineering team – spanning 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 making the people around them meaningfully better.

We’re looking for highly technical engineers who want to ship core systems, strengthen architecture across products, and leave every codebase they touch in better shape than they found it. If you want outsized technical ownership without moving into management, this is your role.

What You Will Be Working On

• 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. You’ll make the calls that prevent architectural dead‑ends two years from now.
• Hands‑On Execution: Spend the majority of your time writing and shipping code. You lead by example – when something is hard, you’re in the trenches.
• Engineering Quality: Eliminate technical debt by refactoring abstractions and raising reliability standards across all teams.
• Technical Mentorship: Elevate the engineers around you through code review, pairing, and direct feedback. Help teams deliver consistently without burning out or accumulating hidden risk.
• AI Systems: Contribute to the architecture and implementation of Mercura’s AI capabilities – from LLM pipelines to data infrastructure – at the intersection of performance and product quality.

What We Offer

• Learn to build a company: Over five Mercura alumni have gone on to found their own companies and raise millions after their time with us.
• 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× week).
• UrbanSportsClub membership and access to a company bike – join our team workouts 3× 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/month.
• Access to any AI or productivity tools you need.

What We’re Looking For

• 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, TypeScript).
• Proven experience designing and evolving systems across multiple products and teams.
• Experience improving system performance, reliability, and scalability at scale.
• Cloud & DevOps 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.

Commitment & Mindset

• Deep technical ownership: You hold the bar. You notice when things are slipping and do something about it – without being asked.
• Leads through doing: Your authority comes from your output and your judgment, not your title. You mentor by being the best engineer in the room.
• Multiplier mentality: You measure your success not just by what you ship, but 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 achieving ambitious goals amid uncertainty.
• Pragmatic and decisive: You know when to go fast and when to go slow. You make architectural calls with incomplete information and stand behind them.
• You want to work in‑person in Munich with a higher intensity than in a 9‑5 job.

You Will Work With

• Sean – Co‑Founder & CTO; Silver Medallist at the International Physics Olympiad.
• 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.
• Nico – former Engineering at SaaS startups Luminovo & Fides.

Your Mentors Will Be

• Rohan Ramanath – General Manager AI Product at Nubank, former co‑founder of Hyperplane.
• Daniel Ribeiro Silva – Senior Director of ML at Nubank, former co‑founder of Hyperplane.

Why Mercura

• Join an ambitious team that feels like family: Your future colleagues are experienced operators, ex‑founders, Science Olympiad medallists, and top graduates from places such as Google, Bain, MIT, TUM, Harvard, CDTM, and Cambridge.
• Work with the latest tech: AI is at the core of our product, and we use the latest tech across our product and processes to tackle meaningful challenges and shape how users interact with AI.
• Thrive in a high‑growth, high‑commitment environment: We’re growing extremely fast because we always put our work and our customers first.
• Build something with real‑world impact: We ship code that directly helps a massive, yet overlooked manual industry run more efficiently and sustainably.
• Build a company: As an early team member, you will have a direct, lasting impact on our culture, processes, technology, and product. Ownership, financial upside, and hands‑on experience building a company from the ground up.