Cherry Ventures is supporting our portfolio with this hireAbout us
We're Cortea, a Berlin-based startup transforming audits through AI technology.
The challenge: Manual audits of unstructured data and documents frustrate both auditors and regulated companies at huge cost, while demand for audits continues to skyrocket.
Our solution: AI-powered software and specialized AI-agents for auditors streamlining workflows and eliminating all repetitive tasks. Starting with IT audits for regulated companies.
With multi-million Euro funding from top-tier VCs, a working AI product, and paying customers, we're now expanding our product and scaling the team.
We value first-principles thinking, speed, trust, and the joy of tackling big challenges together!
Your Role
As a Founding Software Engineer (Backend), you'll be an essential driver in our founding team building Cortea. Your role will focus on two crucial areas of our tech stack.
The first area is the API powering our web app. We favor RPC interfaces and handle most data transformations on the backend. We also prefer writing SQL directly rather than using ORMs. A solid understanding of relational databases is highly valuable in this role.
The second area involves RAG pipelines. While prior ML/AI experience is appreciated, it's not required. Your task will be to ensure that we build robust, safe, and scalable pipelines. This may involve working with queues and asynchronous processes, but maintaining a bias for simplicity and an 80/20 mentality is crucial.
You should also enjoy running experiments, defining evaluation criteria, and occasionally diving deep into data analysis.
As a Founding Engineer, you'll help shape our app and tech team from the ground up. We want you involved in every discussion and decision. Both technical and people leadership opportunities will be built into the role from day one!
Qualifications
- Expertise in building and consuming APIs
- Experience with asynchronous systems (e.g., workflow engines, long-running pipelines)
- Solid understanding of relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL)
- Experience in Python and familiarity with at least one statically typed language (e.g., Go, Java, Rust, C# etc.)
- Familiarity with IaC standards and cloud platforms (e.g. Terraform, GCP, AWS or Azure)
- Experience in building and operating SaaS solutions, covering user management, auth*, and back-office systems
We don’t expect you to have experience in all these areas; we're looking for talented engineers who are passionate about learning, building, and delivering impactful solutions.
What We Offer
- High impact & growth: Front-row seat to scaling an AI startup with significant responsibility to shape strategy from day one
- Mission-driven culture: Join an ambitious team valuing first-principles thinking and bold ideas in a supportive environment
- Competitive compensation: Competitive salary ranging from €80-€120k and significant equity
- Personal development: Learning budget for courses and conferences
- Startup perks: Flexible vacation, team lunches, retreats, and central Berlin office
Interview process
- First Call — Intro on what we do with Valentin
- Second Call — Technical Interview
- Third Call — Get to know our Product and Culture with Philipp
- On-site Half-Day
- Meet our full team in our Berlin office and work on a real problem together with us.
- This includes talking about real challenges, planning a solution, and creating a solution (or a rough draft).
Cherry Ventures is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status.
Top Skills
What We Do
Cherry Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm led by a team of entrepreneurs with experience building fast-scaling companies such as Zalando and Spotify. The firm backs Europe's boldest founders, usually as their first institutional investor, and supports them in everything from their go-to-market strategy and the scaling of their businesses. Cherry Ventures has previously invested in the seed stage of over 90 companies across Europe, including FlixBus, Auto1 Group, Flaschenpost, Forto, SellerX, Juni, and Flink. Cherry Ventures is located in London, Berlin, and Stockholm.
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