Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer — Applied AI… at TradeLink · Munich

About TradeLink

TradeLink builds agentic platforms that lift European supply chains to the next level. Intelligent AI agents take over the routine, while the important decisions and priorities stay with your team. A network connecting companies, suppliers and carriers ensures maximum transparency, reduces lost time, and creates a secure, trusted process. With TradeLink, you're always in command of your logistics — not chasing it.

Find the process. Build the agent. Stay until it works

Spend a day with a logistics team and you will find critical processes held together by email, PDFs, Excel, phone calls, legacy systems and knowledge living in someone's head.

TradeLink is building AI agents that do operational work across supply chains — not just copilots that answer questions.

We are looking for a Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer — Applied AI who goes directly into customer operations, understands what is really happening, builds the solution and takes it into production.

This is not pre-sales. It is not traditional consulting. You are the engineer.

What you'll do

A project may start with you sitting next to a planner and asking: What actually happens when this email arrives?

Then you discover three inboxes, two Excel sheets, a PDF attachment, an unwritten exception rule and a TMS nobody wants to touch. Good. That is where your work starts.

You will:

• Discover workflows directly with logistics and operations teams.
• Turn customer workshops into working prototypes quickly.
• Build integrations, agents, data transformations, approvals and user-facing workflows.
• Connect email, documents and customer systems through APIs, browser automation or another robust approach.
• Take prototypes through production hardening, rollout and measurement.
• Decide what should be AI, what should stay deterministic and where humans need control.
• Challenge customer requirements when automating the existing process would simply automate something bad.
• Turn reusable learnings into capabilities for TradeLink's core product.

What you bring

We are looking for the unusual combination of strong software builder + strong customer instinct.

• Roughly 5+ years building software professionally, or equivalent depth.
• You can independently take something from an ambiguous problem to production and real users.
• You have built integrations with external systems and are comfortable when APIs, data and requirements are messy.
• You can sit with an operations team, understand their workflow and uncover the actual problem.
• You are comfortable across backend and product/full-stack work rather than hiding inside one narrow specialization.
• You use coding agents heavily and have hands-on experience building with LLMs or agents.
• You prototype very quickly without becoming a prototype-only engineer.
• You can explain technical decisions to non-technical people and challenge customers constructively.
• You own outcomes end to end.
• Fluent German and English are important for this role.
• You enjoy being onsite with customers when that is the fastest way to understand the problem.

Backgrounds that could fit

You might be:

• A Founding Engineer from an early-stage B2B or AI startup.
• A Senior Product Engineer who has worked directly with enterprise customers.
• A Forward-Deployed Engineer from an AI company.
• A highly technical Solutions Engineer who still spends most of their time building.
• An ex-consultant who became a serious software engineer.

The profile we love says: "Give me two days with the customer and access to their systems. I'll figure out what we should build."

This probably isn't for you if

• You want requirements fully specified before you start.
• You enjoy customer presentations but want somebody else to write the code.
• You love prototypes but lose interest when reliability and edge cases appear.
• You think every customer request should become a feature.
• You want to avoid customer sites.
• You use AI mainly as something to talk about rather than something you build with.

How we think about AI

AI is already part of how you build.

You use coding agents to move faster, investigate unfamiliar systems, prototype integrations and test ideas. But you know when the model is wrong, when deterministic software is better and when a human needs to remain in control.

You are interested in what AI lets us redesign, not where we can add another chatbot.

Why TradeLink

We have spent years building access to supply-chain operations. Now we can apply AI to the actual work happening inside them.

You can go from a customer conversation to working software quickly. The problems are economically meaningful and operationally real. Successful deployments can become capabilities used across the product.

We care about production outcomes, not innovation theatre.

Our core stack includes Ruby on Rails, React, TypeScript and PostgreSQL. Exact stack experience is useful, but the ability to learn, build and deliver matters more.

How we interview

We will give you an imperfect operational workflow: emails, documents, rules, exceptions and a target system. AI tools are allowed and expected. We want to see what questions you ask, what you choose not to automate, how you structure the solution and how you would get it into production.

One question before you apply: What is the messiest real-world process you have ever turned into working software?

What we offer

• Impact, Innovation & Ownership: Shape our fast-growing, AI-native B2B startup in logistics. We work in small, focused pods, where everyone owns real outcomes – not just tasks. Influence product, customer solutions, growth, and brand. We think big, move fast, and solve real problems.
• AI-Powered, Human-Led: Work at the forefront of an organization built AI-native. You use AI to multiply your impact – while judgment, creativity, and ownership stay clearly human.
• Learn & Grow Fast: Continuous feedback, 360° reviews, and a dedicated development budget to build exactly the skills you need. Work closely with an experienced management team that sets direction – rather than managing your day-to-day in detail.
• Passionate Team: Join a motivated, supportive team that values clarity, ownership, and real impact. In our pods, you work in tight-knit, well-coordinated teams – with real collaboration, not just shared tools.
• Culture & Belonging: Inclusive, diverse, and fun – from virtual team events to unforgettable offsites, we build a strong sense of community everywhere, including regular in-person co-working in Berlin and Munich.
• Own a Piece of Success: Through our VSOP program, you directly share in the company's growth.

💙 Furthermore, you can read more about us and our culture here.

If you aren't completely confident that you meet our criteria, we recommend just taking the chance and applying anyway! Curiosity, passion for digital disruption, eagerness to learn, a collaborative spirit, and a growth mindset are most important to us.

‍TradeLink strongly believes in the power of diversity and is highly committed to providing a respectful, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone who works here or with us. In order to eliminate unconscious biases in the recruiting process, you can remove the photo from your application.

For more information on data processing in the context of applications, please see our privacy policy for the TradeLink application system.