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

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

About Us:

Join an early-stage, AI-native startup with proven market fit, building cutting-edge AI solutions for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) for enterprises worldwide. Our customers are auditors, risk managers, and compliance teams, making evaluation rigor, auditability, and EU AI Act readiness core product requirements.

Your Role:

As one of the first full-time senior engineers, you will be an Application Architect (m/f/d), collaborating closely with our Co-Founder and CTO. You will own the backend architecture and drive improvements in quality and delivery speed.

In the First 6-12 Months, You Will Have:

• Established a clear target architecture and documentation baseline using Arc42.
• Clarified and communicated the core domain model using DDD principles.
• Introduced/standardized an AI-driven development process from feature specs to production deployment.
• Strengthened engineering practices through coaching, pairing, and feedback loops.
• Improved reliability and delivery via better CI/CD, test automation, and infrastructure hygiene.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with the team to develop robust solutions for novel challenges in an AI-first architecture.
• Drive a DevOps-style approach across the full development lifecycle.
• Propose and implement methods to increase delivery speed and reliability.
• Implement and evolve monitoring/observability (metrics, logs, traces, alerting).
• Coach and collaborate with junior developers on development, design, and architecture best practices.
• Plan & document backend architecture using the Arc42 framework.
• Extend & communicate the domain model using DDD principles.
• Manage and extend application infrastructure on Azure with Pulumi.

Requirements:

• Architecture Principles: Comfortable with C4 modeling, Arc42 framework, and design patterns.
• Testing: Highly experienced in TDD and/or BDD.
• Design: Opinionated and passionate about good design.
• Domain-Driven Design (DDD): Experience with DDD principles.
• Backend Development: Deep experience with Java and Spring Boot.
• DevOps Mindset: Strong DevOps experience, including reliable CI/CD pipelines, production-grade monitoring/observability, and incident response practices.
• Leadership: Experience leading and enabling development teams.

Absolute Must-Haves:

• SOLID principles & clean code.
• TDD.
• IntelliJ power-user.
• Claude Code (or comparable AI-assisted development workflows).
• Azure or AWS infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation).

Benefits:

• Hands-on ownership of a real AI product used by enterprise customers.
• Work directly alongside the founding team.
• Hybrid Work Model: Munich North (minimum one day/week in office), flexible otherwise (open to strong candidates elsewhere in the EU). Onboarding requires in-office presence.
• Steep learning curve at the intersection of LLM engineering, enterprise GRC, and startup operations.
• Opportunity to shape the AI team as it grows.

Tech Stack: Java & Spring Boot, Angular, Kubernetes on Azure, OpenAI & Anthropic LLMs.

Company: Auxilius .ai
Location: Munich North (Hybrid) / EU Remote considered
Job Title: Application Architect (m/f/d)