Staff Engineer - AI

OUR PURPOSE AT PLANCRAFT

Building the backbone of European trades together – with AI-first software.
We’re not just building software – we’re on a mission to create space for contractors & tradespeople by equipping them with AI solutions that work the way they do: fast, practical, and AI-first. With Tier 1 Investors from Europe and the US, like Headline and Creandum as well as 30,000+ tradespeople as customer base, we’re scaling across Europe to turn scattered tradespeople into thriving communities. We believe in zero admin, not zero personality – and we build every feature with the people in mind who wear the boots, not the suits. We’re #stoked to shape the future, #together as a team, and #humble in our mission to support the builders of tomorrow.

Your Mission at plancraft

We're building plancraft towards an agentic-first product experience. That means AI-enabled capabilities our customers actually use: features that take real administrative work off a tradesperson's plate and hold up under production load, day after day.

Building AI-enabled products that work reliably at scale requires strong engineering foundations. You'll help shape those foundations — from architecture and system design to engineering practices — while keeping the focus on what we're ultimately building for our customers.

This is an individual contributor role with no disciplinary leadership but significant influence across Engineering. You'll work hands-on where it matters, shape technical direction across teams, and help other engineers build better systems.

We have a clear vision for how we want to build software and the outcomes we want to achieve, while recognising that we're still on the journey to get there. Some foundations are already in place; others are still evolving. We're looking for someone who has built and scaled complex systems before and can bring that experience into what we build.

Our customers are tradespeople. Every hour they spend on paperwork is an hour off the job site. We keep that in mind when making technical decisions: the systems we build should ultimately help us take more work off their plate.

Your Responsibilities

• AI-enabled product capabilities. You'll help define what AI can meaningfully do for our customers and turn emerging capabilities into reliable, observable product experiences that work beyond the demo.

• The wider technical system. Together with our other Staff Engineers, you'll shape architectural direction and the properties that should hold across teams, while enabling individual teams to build and ship independently.

• Data foundations for AI-enabled workflows. You’ll help turn product and business data into meaningful signals, insights, and context that AI can use reliably in customer-facing workflows — from defining the right data models and semantics, and drawing a clear line between operational data and knowledge, to making that understanding available where it creates real product value.

• How we build with AI. You'll influence both how we develop and evaluate customer-facing AI capabilities and how AI changes software engineering itself — from tooling and workflows to standards and practices across the organisation.

How you'll work & influence

We have clear engineering principles, but we expect our Staff Engineers to challenge and evolve them. We favour small, integrated changes, observable systems that recover quickly, explicit architectural boundaries, and engineering decisions that are encoded rather than repeatedly debated. Above all, engineers own customer problems — not tickets.

You'll have meaningful autonomy from the start:

• Shape technical direction. You'll evolve shared architecture and engineering standards through RFCs and ADRs, not by waiting for top-down decisions.

• Own complex initiatives end to end. From discovery and technical design through implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement.

• Influence where Engineering invests. You'll help identify the technical capabilities, architectural improvements, and engineering practices worth investing in.

• Raise the bar across teams. You'll shape architecture, developer experience, AI-enabled engineering practices, and codebase quality beyond your immediate team.

• Multiply other engineers. You'll mentor through collaboration, architectural guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.

How hands-on you are depends on the problem. Some weeks you'll be deep in the code; others you'll focus on system design, technical discovery, or mentoring across teams. We care about the technical outcomes you create, not your commit count.

Your Profile

• AI- and agentic-build competencies. You have designed, built, shipped, or operated AI-enabled or agentic product systems beyond prompts alone: retrieval and knowledge design, evaluation of non-deterministic behaviour, observability of model- and tool-driven flows, and debugging across multi-step agent traces. You know what it takes to move these systems from promising demos into reliable product experiences, and you can help others build the judgement to use them safely.

• Experience building and operating real production systems. You've designed, shipped, and lived with complex systems at scale — whether distributed architectures, asynchronous or multi-step workflows, event-driven services, data pipelines, or ETL pipelines. You understand reliability and observability because you've needed them in practice. You bring 5+ years of software engineering experience and a track record of technical leadership.

• Strong typed-language fundamentals — and a polyglot mindset. You understand the concepts that make a strong type system valuable and use them to keep a growing codebase understandable and maintainable. Our stack is React on the frontend, serverless Node.js / Express on the backend, and GCP underneath — all TypeScript, so you're either productive in TypeScript or able to get there quickly. Where your deepest expertise sits matters less: if that's Rust, Go, Kotlin, or something else, we see it as a strength. Having worked across several languages and paradigms tends to reduce stack bias exactly when systems thinking matters most. Experience with another modern cloud environment is absolutely fine.

• Information systems thinking. You distinguish clearly between operational data and knowledge — the transactional state that runs the business versus the modelled, contextual understanding that AI-enabled workflows depend on — and you design deliberately for both. In an agentic product, that distinction is a practical necessity, not a theoretical one.

• Strong system design and domain modelling skills. You know how to create clear boundaries, model business concepts explicitly, and design systems that can evolve without every change becoming expensive. Techniques such as dependency injection, adapters, making invalid states unrepresentable, and parse-don’t-validate are tools you’ve applied rather than concepts you’ve only read about.

• Strong product thinking. You start with the problem rather than the technology, use evidence to understand customer needs, and make deliberate trade-offs between technical excellence, speed, and product outcomes.

• Technical leadership beyond your own work. You've influenced technical direction across teams, mentored other engineers, and can align Engineering, Product, and business stakeholders without relying on formal authority.

• AI is already part of how you work. You use tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or Codex seriously, understand where they help and where they don't, and can help others adopt them effectively.

• A T-shaped engineering profile. You bring broad engineering judgment across product and system challenges, with genuine depth in at least one area.

• C1 English. German is a plus, not a must.

Deep production engineering experience and the ability to apply it to AI-enabled products matter more than expertise in a specific model or framework.

Who this role is for

This role is for someone who wants to operate as a senior individual contributor with broad technical influence — without people management. You won’t be the only Staff Engineer: we currently have four Staff Engineers and are looking for great additions to the group. You’ll work closely with Engineering Managers who steward people, team environment and flow while you steward the technical system and direction.

You’ll enjoy this role if you like moving across product, architecture, engineering practices and AI-enabled ways of working — and if you prefer shaping systems and standards across teams over specialising deeply in one narrow technology or domain.

WHY PLANCRAFT?

• Team Spirit: We’re driven by passion, commitment, and a shared mission. Team spirit matters to us — and we make it visible: with four major team event weeks per year, casual monthly on-site and remote formats, and a strong recognition culture where we regularly celebrate both the big and small wins together.

• Ownership: You’re encouraged to take ownership from day one. In a flat hierarchy and high-trust environment, you’re empowered to make meaningful decisions and drive real impact.

• Learning & Growth: We invest in your personal and professional development through a strong feedback culture with 6-monthly 360° growth reviews, a personal learning budget (1.500€/year), 2 paid days of educational leave, and targeted enablement formats. Our goal is to help you unlock your full potential.

• AI Enablement: Our internal tools and workflows are AI-enabled by design. We support every team and individual in applying AI at the next level in their daily work.

• Tech & Tooling: You’ll receive a MacBook, premium headphones, and everything else you need — from hardware to tools — to be effective in your daily doing.

• Flexibility: Whether remote, hybrid, abroad or on-site — you work where you’re at your best. Our Hamburg office (with a rooftop terrace) is always open, and you decide each week how often you come in. And if you need a change of scenery, working abroad worldwide up to 2 months is always an option.

• Recharge: To ensure the needed rest, we offer 30 vacation days per year (based on a 5-day week) plus Dec 24th off. We also subsidize your Urban Sports Club membership and organize internal sport meetups.

• Mobility: You can lease a "JobRad" (Bike) and get a subsidized "Deutschlandticket" or "BahnCard" for public transport to be supported in your commute.

• International Environment: We’re becoming more international every month, with team members already in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Austria — which is why English is our internal company language.

We’re #stoked to shape the future, #together as a team, and #humble in our mission to support the builders of tomorrow. For a first impression of us, take a look at our Instagram and LinkedIn page.

Diversity makes us better.
We welcome people of all backgrounds, identities, abilities, and experiences, and we believe that different perspectives lead to better ideas, stronger products, and a healthier workplace. If you’re excited about our mission but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every requirement, we encourage you to apply anyway. You might be exactly who we’re looking for.

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On the application process
We want your candidate experience with us to be smooth, transparent, and enjoyable. We aim to get back to you regarding your application within 5 business days. Our interview process typically takes about 4 weeks from start to finish, though this may vary by role. You can learn more about our process here. If you need adjustments or flexibility at any stage, please don’t hesitate to let us know — we’ll do our best to make it work for you.

Note on creating a test account:
If you would like to create a test account as part of the challenge, please enter "Applicant" in the relevant field during registration and select "Other" under Trade. This ensures that our sales team does not mistakenly register you as a craft business and reach out to you unnecessarily.