Founding Software Engineer - YC AI Video Production Startup
Bounty Amount: €8,000 - €13,000
Company Name: Hera
Role Type: Full-time
Location: Berlin, Germany (On-site Strongly preferred) (Remote possible from New York, NY or San Francisco, CA)
Salary / Hourly Rate: €80,000 - €130,000 per year
Benefits: 0.50% - 1.50% Equity
Role Information
Role Overview: N/A
Responsibilities: Partner with the founders to deliver user-centric product solutions from concept to production., Own the end-to-end development of full-stack product features., Design scalable architecture that supports rapid product iteration and long-term growth., Build and optimize agentic LLM systems using tool-calling, multi-step reasoning, and MCP protocols., Optimize LLM inference performance, latency, and cost across multiple model architectures., Develop a high-performance motion graphics engine., Make architectural decisions that support scaling the platform to millions of users.
Qualifications: 1+ years of experience building production software., Strong experience with full-stack development., Experience building or working with modern web applications., Strong programming and system design skills., Ability to ship products quickly in fast-moving environments.
Minimum Requirements: Proven experience working with or within a top high-growth startup or elite technology company (examples: top YC startups, Palantir, Stripe, Ramp, Notion, Figma, Scale AI, Anduril, etc.).,Strong programming skills in modern languages used for web or backend development.,Ability to design and build scalable full-stack systems.,Comfort working in fast-paced startup environments with high ownership.
Screening Questions: (Optional) Record a short 2–3 minute Loom introducing yourself and describing the most interesting product or system you’ve built.,(Optional) Please share your GitHub, portfolio, or links to software projects you’ve built.,Hera is building creative software where users can generate animations using AI and then fine-tune them interactively. What architectural approach would you take to build a scalable system that supports real-time generation, editing, and rendering of animations?
Company Information
About Company: N/A
Culture: N/A
Additional Information
Interview Process: Intro call with the founders, Technical discussion or coding interview, Architecture or system design conversation, Final founder interview
Day to day: Building and improving generative AI models for animation creation, Developing evaluation pipelines for animation quality, Collaborating with motion designers to translate design knowledge into ML systems, Experimenting with new approaches for controllable generative media, Shipping AI features directly into the product
Team: This role works directly with the founders and engineering team.Hera operates as a small founding team, so engineers will have significant ownership over product and technical decisions.
Growth: As a founding engineer, this role offers the opportunity to shape the architecture and engineering culture of the company.Future growth opportunities may include Senior Engineer, Staff Engineer, or Engineering Leadership roles as the team grows.
Ideal Candidate Profile: Ambitious builder who wants to join a founding team, Strong curiosity about AI and creative tools, Comfortable solving ambiguous technical problems, Excited about building systems that support millions of users, Motivated by ownership and long-term impact
