Founding Product Engineer

At A Glance

• Role: First Founding Product Engineer in Munich
• Scope: Product, frontend, backend/data systems, LLM agents, and customer work
• Company: Well-funded, YC-backed startup building the marketing suite for the Agentic Web
• Work style: Onsite by default, high ownership, truly AI-native
• Compensation: EUR 85k to EUR 120k base plus 0.6% to 2.0% equity-like upside

Intro

Jochen and I have known each other since 2019. We started this company in 2025 in the energy space. Mid-2025 we sold our tech (home energy management systems for households with EVs, solar and heatpumps) to find a new market. During that time we first noticed how many consumers were already asking ChatGPT for advice before putting solar panels onto their roof. And our partners were left wondering why their competitor showed up and they didn’t. Looking deeper at the problem we closed a pilot with one of the largest insurances in the world and 3 months later, we were accepted into YC W26.

Today, the GEO market is moving from tracking AI visibility to operationalizing optimization. Teams no longer just want to know whether they show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. They are building the workflows to take action every day: define a strategy, create better content, build the right pages, earn the right mentions, and understand what levers actually change how AI systems talk about them.

We believe GEO will be a full marketing discipline. Agents will increasingly shape buying decisions, so companies need to market to humans and agents at the same time. Sitefire is building the analytics and execution layer for that shift:

1. the place marketing teams go to understand their brand's AI visibility, sentiment, and traffic
2. the agents that execute the actions to win more customers.

Under the hood, this means working with large, fast-growing datasets (~50M+ rows) and turning them into signal for our agents.

The Role

We are hiring our first engineer in Munich: a Founding Product Engineer who can own full product features end to end. You will work directly with the founders and customers, figure out what to build, ship it, and keep improving it until it creates real customer value.

This is a high-intensity, founder-style role for someone who wants ownership, speed, and direct exposure to customers. It is not a narrow frontend, backend, or platform role.

It is also a chance to help build a truly AI-native company in Munich. We want AI to be part of the operating system of the company: how we build product, review work, improve agents, learn from customers, and create self-improving loops around the business.

Your First 90 Days

In your first 90 days, you will help turn Sitefire from an analytics product with agents into the platform marketing teams run their GEO agents on.

You will work directly with us and our customers to understand where agents can create real leverage: not just generating drafts, but taking useful actions inside marketing workflows.

You will likely spend your first months on work like:

• Expanding what Sitefire agents can do by adding more external connectors, deeper workflow integrations, and more specialized expert agents.
• Building the quality systems around those agents, including evals, review flows, customer-facing controls, and feedback loops that make the system better over time.
• Joining customer jour fixes and sales calls to learn the market, understand what teams actually need, and see where the product is still too manual.
• Demoing the product and the features you build directly to customers, then using their feedback to improve them quickly.
• Scoping new agentic features with customers so Sitefire integrates more deeply into their marketing stack.
• Shipping end-to-end product work across frontend, backend/data systems, LLM pipelines, and UX.

If timing lines up, you will also fly to San Francisco with us for two weeks this fall to work from the center of the YC ecosystem, meet founders and customers, and sharpen how we build the company.

By the end of your first 90 days, you should have shipped meaningful product improvements, built customer context, and changed what our agents are capable of.

The work spans product thinking, frontend, backend systems, LLM pipelines, data, and customer conversations. You should enjoy that range.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for a builder who can own a feature without needing a full team around them.

The best version of this person can use AI to move extremely fast, but still has the judgment to make the result production-ready. We do not need a narrow frontend, backend, infra, or AI engineer. We need someone who can connect product taste with architecture and execution.

You should be strong at:

• Shipping production SaaS features.
• Owning full-stack product work from ambiguous problem to live product.
• Designing simple UX for complex workflows.
• Building reliable pipelines and agents, not just impressive demos.
• Building frontend experiences with taste, clarity, and care.
• Working on backend systems and data-heavy product flows.
• Talking to customers and representing the company well.
• Using AI as leverage while staying fully accountable for quality.
• Moving fast without losing judgment.

High agency matters. We do not care about exact years of experience as much as evidence that you can build, decide, ship, and learn quickly.

Our Stack

Our product is built with TypeScript, React, Vite, Supabase, Vercel, and ClickHouse. We use LLMs and agentic workflows heavily in the product and in the way we work.

You do not need to have used every tool in our stack before. You do need to be able to learn quickly and make good technical decisions in a fast-moving product environment.

We are serious about building with AI, not just talking about it. That means using coding agents, evals, review loops, internal tools, and customer feedback systems to make the company better every week.

How We Work

We work in person in Munich. The office is near Munich Hauptbahnhof, air conditioned, and shared with other early-stage startups.

We are an early-stage team and work with founder-level intensity. That means short, candid feedback loops, direct customer contact, fast shipping, and a lot of responsibility. A day of home office is possible when it makes sense, but this is not a remote or hybrid role.

We are trying to find our sustainable maximum. We work intensely, in person, and with very high standards. At the same time, we care about staying clear-headed, managing stress, and treating each other as humans, not just output machines.

In normal weeks, expect office-first work and a high pace. When someone needs a break, we take that seriously.

We take team trips to San Francisco every six months.

Relocation to Munich and visa support can be discussed case by case for exceptional candidates.

Why Join

This is a rare moment to join before the team is fully formed. You will not inherit a mature machine; you will help build the machine.

You will be one of the first employees and our first engineer in Munich. If you are the right person, you will materially change how fast we can build, learn, and win.

You will work on a real customer problem with enterprise users, fast-growing datasets, and a product category that is changing quickly. You will scale our analytics layer to handle billions of rows across citation, visibility, source, and agent-workflow data.

You will also be early in a market we care about deeply. We think the Agentic Web changes how companies are discovered, evaluated, and bought from. This is not just SEO with a new name. It is the start of a broader shift in how marketing teams operate.

You will also get unusually strong access to the Munich, German, and YC startup ecosystems. The founding team has roots in PhD research, TU Munich, Stanford and local hubs like CDTM, Manage&More, and Schub. We are backed by Y Combinator, CDTM Ventures, people at OpenAI, Sequoia Scout, unicorn founders, and some of the best angel investors in Munich.

You will be close to networks that are hard to access from a normal engineering job: YC founders and partners in San Francisco, the CDTM and Manage&More communities in Munich, Schub, technical founders, senior operators, and early customers at serious enterprise brands.

This is your chance to help build a truly AI-native company in Munich: a small team where the first engineer helps define not only the product, but also the way the company learns, ships, and improves.

Compensation

• Base salary: EUR 85k to EUR 120k
• Equity-like upside: 0.6% to 2.0% through a VSOP/equity program currently being finalized

Final compensation depends on experience, ownership level, and fit for the role.

Benefits

We keep benefits practical and useful. The main upside is ownership, but you will also get the setup and environment needed to do your best work.

• MacBook Pro and the hardware setup you need
• Paid AI tooling, including coding agents, LLM subscriptions, and model/API usage needed for your work
• Wellpass membership
• Office near Munich Hauptbahnhof, shared with other early-stage startups
• Team trips to San Francisco every six months
• Direct customer exposure, founder-level ownership, and access to the Munich, German, and YC startup ecosystems

This Is Probably Not For You If

• You want a narrow backend-only or frontend-only role.
• You do not want to talk to customers.
• You want a remote-first role.
• You need a large team and detailed specs before you can ship.
• You are not already using AI heavily to get better and faster at your work.
• You prefer slow planning cycles over building, testing, and learning from real users.