{"id":2188534,"url":"https://alion.io/job/whybrilliant-founding-engineer","title":"Founding Engineer","company":{"id":3873038,"name":"WhyBrilliant","domain":"whybrilliant.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/whybrilliant","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":true,"employer_type":"agency","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Schema","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","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":{"min":100000,"max":150000,"currency":"EUR","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":167969},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Claude Code","optional":false},{"name":"Cursor","optional":false},{"name":"FastAPI","optional":false},{"name":"Jira","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Next.js","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI Codex","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Voice Agents","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-03T06:53:42Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-01","last_verified_at":"2026-10-10T00:44:59Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":38,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":38},"description":"WhyBrilliant | Berlin (Hybrid) | Full-time | Founding Team Competitive salary + meaningful equityVoice + LLM Platform (0→1) | Technical Hire #1\nHiring is drowning in noise. CVs and dashboards don’t create understanding. Conversations do.\nWe’re building WhyBrilliant, a voice-first hiring platform and market network: two voice agents (company + candidate) connected by an insight engine that turns conversations into structured signal-and turns recruiter fees into platform revenue. Career clarity, served hot.\nWe’re backed by Merantix, one of Europe’s leading Tier 1 AI investors. You’ll join an experienced founder team (product + platform + go-to-market) with early traction already on the board-and a very big ambition for 2026.\nThis is a massive market. Hiring is a multi-hundred-billion € mess globally, and it’s ready for a new system built on conversations, not forms.\nThe Exciting Problems You’ll Solve\nThe heart of WhyBrilliant is a matching engine that doesn’t just \"keyword match\" CVs. It builds structured truth from messy, human conversations. If you like building systems where product, data, and models collide-this is the main course.\nYou’ll help us build an engine that can:\nExtract Signal: Turn voice conversations into clean, reusable signal (skills, intent, constraints, seniority, comp, motivation, culture cues).\nReimagine Roles: Model roles as outcome-based success profiles, not static job ads.\nEnsure Transparency: Do matching that’s explainable (why this person, why this role) instead of relying on black-box vibes.\nDrive Feedback Loops: Learn over time using signals from the marketplace (interview outcomes, hiring decisions, retention proxies).\nBuild Defensibility: Stay robust against garbage input, prompt attacks, and \"creative storytelling\" from both sides.\nPerform at Scale: Work fast and reliably under real constraints (latency, cost, privacy, compliance).\nWhat You’ll Do (Day-to-Day)\nThis is a founding seat. You’ll own real surface area: architecture, implementation, and hard trade-offs-and you’ll ship fast.\nEnd-to-End Build: Construct the core platform from scratch (candidate + employer experience, dashboards, data layer).\nAI Orchestration: Ship LLM-powered systems including orchestration, retrieval, structured extraction, evaluation, and matching.\nVoice Engineering: Make voice production-grade by optimizing latency, reliability, flow design, and creating a \"this actually feels good\" UX.\nSecurity by Design: Build a secure stack (auth, secrets, isolation, logging, abuse prevention, safe data handling).\nTechnical Leadership: Own architecture and technical decisions end-to-end, keeping them highly pragmatic.\nThe Stack (Today)\nIf you have strong opinions here: great. Bring them. This is a 0→1 build, not a \"maintain legacy\" job.\nTypeScript: Next.js\nPython: FastAPI, async services\nDatabase: Postgres (structured + unstructured + vector)\nCloud: Modern cloud tooling (optimized for speed + reliability)\nAI/Voice: Leading LLM providers + modern voice infrastructure\nWhat We’re Looking For\nThis is not a \"tickets in Jira\" job. It’s an ownership job.\nCore Languages: Strong experience with TypeScript (Next.js) and Python (FastAPI, async systems).\nAI/ML Experience: Proven experience building LLM and ML-based systems (ideally in production, or very close to it).\nArchitecture & Ownership: You’ve owned architecture end-to-end before (or you’ve been the person everyone relied on).\nSecurity Mindset: You bake best practices and security into how you build from day one.\nExecution: You are a hands-on, pragmatic, and fast shipper.\nModern Workflows: Excited about AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex)-and you actually use them.\nBonus points if you have: Built low-latency systems, developed voice UX, or worked on data-heavy products dealing with messy inputs.\nWhy Join?\nMaximum Leverage: As Technical Hire #1, you have maximum ownership and no passenger seats.\nReal Upside: Meaningful equity-you are building the core.\nTop-Tier Comp: Competitive compensation (cash + equity); we want A-players, not bargains.\nStrong Backing: Supported by Merantix, meaning a high bar, high support, and serious ambition.\nRare Timing: Voice + LLMs are finally good enough to reshape workflows people actually hate.\nClear Mission: Reduce noise, increase signal, and make hiring feel human again-at scale.\nView this role and more opportunities at WhyBrilliant: https://whybrilliant.com/app/jobs/founding-engineer-whybrilliant-berlin","description_format":"text","description_chars":4466,"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":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Germany","iso":"DE","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-09T16:59:43Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":13,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.292,"p_room":0.45,"age_days":36,"expected_fill_days":21,"reasons":["conf:5","agency","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-10T05:45:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":167969,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/whybrilliant-founding-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/whybrilliant-founding-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-11T08:45:03Z","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":"assistant_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1772,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-12T00:00:00Z"}},"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":3873038},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3873038"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fwhybrilliant-founding-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%2Fwhybrilliant-founding-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%2Fwhybrilliant-founding-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/whybrilliant-founding-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwhybrilliant-founding-engineer"}]}