Application Architect - AI Native Startup (m/f/d)

About the role

Join an early-stage, AI-native company that already has product-market fit and is building advanced AI solutions for enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC). The product serves auditors, risk managers, and compliance teams, so strong evaluation standards, auditability, and readiness for the EU AI Act are integral to the work, not optional extras.

As an Application Architect, you will be among the first senior full-time engineers and work closely with the Co-Founder and CTO. Your focus will be to define and strengthen backend architecture while helping the team improve quality, speed, and delivery practices.

What you will achieve in the first 6–12 months

• Set up a clear target architecture and a documentation foundation based on Arc42
• Shape and explain the core domain model using Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
• Introduce and standardize an AI-led development workflow, from feature specification through to production rollout
• Improve engineering habits through coaching, pairing, and feedback cycles, especially for junior developers
• Raise reliability and delivery performance through stronger CI/CD, automated testing, and cleaner infrastructure practices

Key responsibilities

• Work with the team to solve new and complex problems in an AI-first architecture
• Promote a DevOps-oriented mindset across the full path from specification to development and delivery
• Design and implement ways to speed up delivery while making it more dependable, including better flow, faster feedback, and stronger recovery
• Build and refine observability across systems, including metrics, logs, traces, and alerting, to surface issues early and learn from production
• Coach junior developers and support them in applying strong development, design, and architecture practices
• Help create an AI-driven development process from feature specs to production deployment
• Plan and document backend architecture using the Arc42 framework
• Extend and communicate the domain model using DDD principles
• Run and evolve application infrastructure on Azure using Pulumi

Requirements

• Strong understanding of architecture practices and principles, including C4 modeling, the Arc42 framework, and design patterns
• Advanced experience with Test-Driven Development (TDD) and/or Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
• A clear point of view and enthusiasm for high-quality software design
• Practical experience with Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
• Deep hands-on expertise in Java and Spring Boot
• A strong DevOps orientation, with experience building reliable CI/CD pipelines, solid release processes, production observability, incident response practices, and continuous improvement loops such as post-incident reviews
• Experience leading, guiding, and enabling development teams
• Strong command of SOLID principles and clean code
• Excellent TDD skills
• Very strong IntelliJ productivity skills
• Experience using Claude Code or comparable AI-assisted development workflows
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code on Azure or AWS, such as Terraform, Bicep, or CloudFormation

Benefits

• Direct ownership of a live AI product used by enterprise customers
• Close collaboration with the founding team from the start
• Flexible hybrid setup based in Munich North, with at least one in-office day per week and onboarding completed on site
• Open to strong candidates elsewhere in the EU if there is a strong fit
• Steep learning opportunities across LLM engineering, enterprise GRC, and startup operations
• The opportunity to help shape the AI team as the company grows

Additional information

The company builds AI-enabled GRC solutions for enterprises and is in an early growth phase with real customer backing. The technology stack includes Java, Spring Boot, Angular, Kubernetes on Azure, and LLMs from OpenAI and Anthropic.