{"id":3615073,"url":"https://alion.io/job/ferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer","title":"Founding Principal Engineer","company":{"id":4461806,"name":"Ferto AI","domain":"fertoai.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/ferto-ai","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":null,"truth_index":null},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Berlin, Germany"],"countries":["DE"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"OpenTofu","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":null,"last_verified_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":null,"days_open":7,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":7},"description":"Job Title\n Founding Principal Engineer Job Description\nYou own the platform behind our medical device: backend services, data, infrastructure, security and identity. A first version runs today. The work is to make it trustworthy enough for clinical use: patient data that stays safe, an audit trail that holds up for years, and a system that recovers when something breaks. You work closely with the founders and our CTO.\nHow Python is used: the backend, the analysis that turns detections into a result, and our infrastructure scripts are Python. You write mostly Python, plus PostgreSQL and OpenTofu.\nWhat you'll do:\nOwn the platform end to end: backend, data, infrastructure and security.\nGet it ready for clinical use, and keep it reliable as we grow.\nBuild identity, access and data handling that clinics and auditors can trust.\nMake the architecture calls: what to build now, what to defer, what to cut.\nSet the engineering standard and help hire the team that follows.\nWhat we offer: a founding role with a virtual share option plan (VSOP), a competitive salary (we share the range in our first conversation), and flexible hours. We work from Berlin and meet in person regularly, up to several days a week. English is our working language; German isn't required. We sponsor the EU Blue Card.\nTo apply, send your CV to . Tell us where you're based and whether you need a visa to work in Germany.\nRestrictions\nNo telecommuting\n No Agencies Please\n Requirements\nYou've built backend platforms from scratch and run them in production, through outages, data incidents, migrations and growth.\nDatabase depth: indexing, locking, transactions, replication, zero-downtime schema changes, and backups you've actually restored.\nSecurity by default: authentication and authorisation, tenant isolation, secrets, audit logging.\nIdentity: identity providers, sessions and tokens, roles and permissions, onboarding and offboarding.\nInfrastructure as code, containers, Linux, networking and cloud are everyday tools for you.\nCoding agents are part of your daily work, and you stand behind every line you ship.\nNice to have: regulated environments with audits (medical devices, health, finance), and serving ML models in production.\nAbout the Company\nFerto turns an iPhone on a standard microscope into a lab instrument. Computer vision models locate, track and measure cells in real time, starting with semen analysis. We're a small, well-funded founding team in Berlin, founded in 2026, and we build a medical device together with clinicians and lab staff.\nContact Info\nContact: Ferto hiring team\nE-mail contact: \nWeb: https://fertoai.com/careers/principal-engineer","description_format":"text","description_chars":2692,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"German","level":"All levels","optional":false},{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":false}]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Biotechnology","Smartphones","Laboratory Equipment"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-02T16:08:48Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":7,"expected_fill_days":28,"reasons":["seen:7","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-03T00:59:39Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/ferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/ferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-03T00:59:39Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1021,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-04T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4461806},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4461806"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/ferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fferto-ai-founding-principal-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3615073}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"fertoai.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3615073},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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