Founding Engineer / Full-Stack Developer

acemate is building the leading AI learning & teaching platform for higher education institutions. We have strong traction, secured funding and are entering an exciting growth phase. We're looking for a passionate Founding Engineer to drive our product forward and help us scale.

About acemate

Founded less than a year ago, acemate has quickly become Germany's leading AI learning platform for universities, trusted by top-tier institutions across three countries, including TU Munich , WHU and the Deutsche Industrie- und Handelskammer (DIHK) .

• Our Mission: Democratizing access to personalized learning. We don’t believe that AI will replace educators. Instead, we empower them to design and deliver personalized learning experiences at scale.
• Our Growth: We've raised pre-seed funding and are growing rapidly. While we focus on higher education today, we're already expanding into new regions and markets.
• Our Culture: We’re a young, driven team passionate about tackling the toughest challenges in education. We embrace builder culture and minimize scheduled meetings for ad-hoc discussions and maximized focus on coding and creating.

Meet the Team

• Antong (CEO): BCG, BMW & Antler background, leads business strategy, DJ by night
• Jan (CTO): NLP research, experience from SAP & N26, morning bike commuter
• Paul (CPO): Product expert with startup and education research background, devoted dog dad
• Emile (Fullstack): Ex-founder with product & AI background, ETH graduate, avid runner
• Anas (Fullstack): TypeScript specialist, functional programming enthusiast, chief photography officer
• Alejandro (Founder's Associate): Mechanical engineering background, Roland Berger & Amazon experience, reggaeton enjoyer

We have an office in Berlin and believe in the value of in-person work, but we’re also realistic about the time people spend commuting.

Tasks

What You'll Do

As a core team member, your role will evolve based on your strengths and interests, spanning both product development and technical infrastructure. You'll have significant influence on our product decisions, technical architecture, and overall strategy.

• Build features end-to-end: Collaborate closely with Paul and Emile , listen to users, translate their feedback, and deliver scalable full-stack improvements.
• Design core backend services: Implement the modern APIs, background jobs, and internal tools that form the backbone of our product.
• Shape our technical infrastructure: Take ownership of our systems' reliability, performance, and scalability as we grow
• Develop enterprise-grade systems: Implement critical backend foundations for enterprise customers, including access controls, SSO, and multi-tenancy integrations.
• Advance our AI workflows: Build and optimize the AI pipelines and asynchronous processes that power our core features, continuously improving our toolchains to leverage the latest advancements.

Examples from the past of what you might build:

• Duolingo-inspired daily quiz system to engage students with university content
• Complex AI pipelines that extract textual and visual content from diverse documents and embed topics in knowledge graphs
• Custom authorization engine to handle growing complexity across different institutional settings
• Backend migration from a monolithic fullstack setup to a dedicated API layer with granular access control

Tech Stack:

• Frontend: TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS
• Database: PostgreSQL (Supabase)
• Infrastructure: Cloudflare (Workers, Pages, Workflows, R2, KV), Google Cloud (Gemini, Cloud Run)
• API backend : Hono, tRPC, Bun, Typescript
• AI : Custom pipelines built with the Vercel AI SDK
• Tools: Sentry, Langfuse, PostHog, Stripe

Don't worry if you're not familiar with everything from the start. We believe in your ability to learn fast and adapt to new frameworks and tools as we go.

Requirements

What We're Looking For

• Ownership mindset: You think like a founder and treat the product like it’s yours
• Commitment to excellence: You’re driven to go above and beyond when it matters
• Product passion: High identification with our mission to transform education
• Curiosity and adaptability: Eager to learn new technologies and stay open to innovation
• Balanced AI approach: You knew how to code before Cursor and AI tools, but understand how to leverage them effectively
• Startup experience: You ideally have worked in a tech team in a startup environment

Benefits

Benefits

• Competitive salary package with equity component
• Working in a small but driven team built around performance and learning
• Flexible environment with high degree of autonomy and option to work remotely
• Frequent team events and acemate parties!

Ready to Join Us?

Send us your GitHub profile, your portfolio and any other relevant links, and let's build the future of education together.