Technical Co-Founder & CTO (PreSeed AI Recruiter for Skilled Trades)

Founders Factory builds and funds startups together with exceptional entrepreneurs and the world’s leading companies. Created by IPO-exited founders, we offer founders capital, operational support from a team of hands-on experts, and unrivalled access to a coalition of industry-leading corporate partners. Since 2015, our 300+ portfolio companies have raised $900mm follow-on funding from a roster of notable investors.

Our Studio partners with entrepreneurs at day one, developing new ideas, technologies and business models into high-growth companies. In partnership with Vonovia, Europe’s largest residential real estate company, we are building a new venture to solve the most acute labor shortage in the German economy: the skilled trades.

We’re looking for an experienced operator with entrepreneurial ambitions to lead MeisterMatch as Founder & CEO with our investment and the full backing of Founders Factory.

The Opportunity: Building Germany’s First Compounding Talent Pool for Trades

Germany faces a severe shortage of skilled workers, with over 250,000 unfilled trade roles and a demographic cliff where 45% of current tradespeople are over 50 years old. For major employers like Vonovia, hiring an electrician currently takes an average of 180 to 300 days. Traditional job boards and agencies are broken—optimised for CVs rather than real skills, they fail to engage passive talent and charge exorbitant fees.

MeisterMatch is an AI-native recruiter powered by two specialized agents: a Candidate Agent that onboards tradespeople via WhatsApp/voice (no CV required), and an Employer Agent that delivers qualified shortlists to hiring managers within 48 hours.

Unlike generalist AI tools, MeisterMatch understands the full taxonomy of 130+ recognized German crafts (ZDH) and automatically maps international qualifications to German standards. By building a living, verified supply-side infrastructure, we reduce the cost per hire by 50% and turn every hire into a sourcing channel through embedded referral mining.

With 355 live roles from Vonovia as instant demand and a seed network of 5,000+ employed craftspeople, MeisterMatch is positioned to own the trade talent market.

Our offer

• Co-found a company with Founders Factory’s team of IPO-exited founders and entrepreneurs to develop a category-defining materials platform.

• Access to an expert team through our Venture Studio and 6-month accelerator programme.

• Unlock €760k combined cash and hands-on support from our experienced team.

• A validated concept with proven early results: our test site achieved a 7% conversion rate at a cost per acquisition 4x lower than previous benchmarks.

• A dedicated studio budget (including the founder stipend, specialist resource and infrastructure budget).

• Build with expert input from Vonovia, using their massive technical services division as a design partner and first customer.

What we’re looking for

• Production agentic experience: You’ve shipped at least one agent-based product to real users. You can describe failure modes, eval pipelines, cost-control, latency, fallback logic in specifics, not buzzwords.

• Full-stack reach: You’re comfortable across backend, data, and at least light frontend. You are willing and able to build independently for the first 6–9 months, prioritising momentum and customer value over perfect architecture.

• Integration grit: You have worked with messy real-world APIs and external systems, including government datasets, third-party SaaS platforms, HR systems, or fragmented enterprise tooling.

• Voice and conversational AI literacy: You understand where meaningful product differentiation still exists and which parts are commodity (ASR, TTS, basic turn-taking).

• DACH market understanding: You have lived or worked in the DACH region long enough to understand how Mittelstand businesses and Handwerk operators actually work. Professional English language proficiency is required. German language skills are strongly preferred.

• Sound judgment on European data protection in AI systems: You have a clear point of view on building AI systems in Europe, including voice as biometric data, third-country transfer considerations when using US-based LLM providers, and candidate consent flows.

• Founder mentality: You have founded something before, been an early engineering hire (#1–3), or consistently operated with ownership beyond your formal title. You are energised by ambiguity, speed, and building from first principles.

Nice-to-Haves

• Background in computational linguistics, NLP, or formal systems

• Experience in recruitment, marketplaces, or two-sided platforms

• Experience building against the WhatsApp Business API

• Experience working in regulated industries or with KYC, identity verification, or document-verification workflows