Principal Software Engineer, Public Sector (f/m/d) at Prewave · Vienna

What we build

Most companies find out about supplier insolvencies, cyber attacks, factory fires or floods that affect their supply chain when it's already a crisis. Prewave exists to change that. We're an AI-native company giving BMW Group, Hilti and Lufthansa real-time visibility into supply chain risks before they become headlines.

Governments face the same problem at a larger scale. When COVID hit, European governments needed months to find out who could produce basic medical equipment. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it was the same with ammunition. Today, if a port closes or an export ban lands overnight, most governments still can't say which industries are exposed, who can step in, or how quickly. Now we're building a new product that brings this to the public sector in Europe, starting from zero.

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer who takes ownership of large parts of this new product, end to end, from day one. Someone who uses AI as a default part of how they work and knows when to trust their own judgment. Do you want to build something Europe relies on in its next crisis?

What you'll own

The role is closer to a founding engineer at a startup than to a lead in a large organisation: you'll make product decisions alongside engineering ones and set the standard for how we build. The problems are concrete and hard. Which European manufacturers depend on a single supplier for a critical material? If that supplier fails tomorrow, who can make up the shortfall, and how fast? How do you answer these questions with data that its owners guard closely?

On a given day, you might write the spec for a new capability in the morning, run several agents against it and review what they produce, debug a deployment on Kubernetes in the afternoon, and rework a user interface after walking a public sector user through a prototype. We work agent-first: coding agents write most of our code, and our engineers own the specs, the architecture and the quality of everything that ships.

Your tasks include (but not limited to):

• Own whole areas of the public sector product end to end: architecture, UX, frontend, backend and infrastructure, from first UI design to running them
• Shape what we build as much as how we build it. Much is still undefined, and you’ll be part of defining it
• Drive an agent-first workflow: write the specs, set the architecture and review every change
• Hold the quality bar, so that moving fast with agents never costs reliability, security or maintainability
• Run and evolve the platform we operate ourselves: Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, identity, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and monitoring. Fix things when they break
• Ship your first change in your first week, and within a few months steer a part of the system you know better than anyone

What we are looking for

You are the right fit if you:

• have 7+ years of experience in building and shipping complex full-stack web applications that people depended on, and keeping them running.Fewer years but something real to show? Apply anyway!
• are an expert in TypeScript and the web engineering ecosystem, from browsers, HTML and CSS to APIs and backend services, built with technologies such as React and Node.js
• have a taste of what a product should look and feel like. Early user interface decisions are yours as much as engineering ones
• work across the whole stack, from infrastructure and DevOps (Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD) to UI/UX, and deploy and run what you build
• have deep engineering fundamentals: system design, data modelling, testing, security and running software in production
• are deeply fluent in agentic coding and keep up as it changes: you know what today’s agents can do, where they break down, and how to set up a project so they do their best work. You build the specs, tests, architecture checks and monitoring that tell you when their code is wrong
• have an appetite for the hardest and least defined problems. You take ambiguous problems, decide what to build, drive them with users and partners, and follow through after launch. Nobody hands you a spec
• speak and write fluent English and hold a valid work permit for Austria

Nice to have:

• experience in further languages such as Java, Kotlin, Go, Rust or Python, and the judgement to know when a different language is the right call
• Experience with Electron, cryptography, or LLM-based agents and products
• A degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Maths or a related field

What's our working style

We're a resilient AI-native team building an AI-native resilience product - and we hire for both. For us, AI-native has always meant humans and AI working together, not one replacing the other. We use coding agents as a normal part of the job, across the whole development cycle from planning and implementation to testing and review, to think faster, work smarter and spend less time on the repetitive stuff. We run several agents in parallel, spend more of our time on specs, architecture and review than on typing code, and keep refining how we work as the tools improve. We treat AI fluency as a skill like any other - something you build, experiment with and keep developing.

What goes with that is real ownership. You'll have the space and the trust to decide how your part of the system is built - with a small, senior team around you to challenge your ideas and plenty of support when you need it. Things move fast here and the brief won't always be complete, but that's what makes the work interesting.

The people who do best at Prewave are curious by default, go after things rather than wait to be handed them, and don't lose their footing when the plan changes.

We score five values in every interview - creating positive impact through our successful customers, being an ambitious innovator, operating with urgency, doing things that make sense and collaborating with kindness - so you always know what we're looking for and can prepare accordingly.

The Package

Minimum EUR 75,000 gross annually. This is the legally required minimum disclosure, the actual package (and possible variable elements like bonus programme) is based on your qualifications and experience. Flexible hours and hybrid working.

Your birthday off. MyClubs partnership. Mental health support. Regular health check-ups and initiatives. Company-wide training. Fun team events. Device of choice. Work from anywhere - up to 6 weeks a year.