Founding AI Engineer — Hera (YC S25)
Location: Berlin, Germany (Onsite strongly preferred) — Remote from New York, NY or San Francisco, CA also considered
Compensation: €80,000 – €130,000 base + equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available — no relocation assistance provided
Experience Level: 3+ years
Employment Type: Full-Time
About Hera
Hera is building the world's first AI motion designer that creates professional animations in seconds. Video teams waste countless hours animating seconds of content, and traditional motion design tools like After Effects require mastering complex interfaces that slow down creativity. Hera solves this by allowing users to create animations through conversation with AI — generating animations with prompts and fine-tuning every parameter using on-canvas editing.
Unlike video generation tools, Hera produces code-based animations that remain fully editable, combining the control of professional animation software with the simplicity of modern AI tools. Within two weeks of launching, users created over 200,000 animations, and the company reached six-figure ARR within 10 days of launch. Part of Y Combinator S25.
About the Role
This is a founding AI engineering role working directly with the founders to build and optimize LLM-powered code generation systems for professional animation. The team is small and elite — every hire is expected to contribute at a very high level and push the company forward quickly. Future growth could include Staff AI Engineer or Head of AI as the team expands.
What You'll Own
- Build and optimize LLM-powered code generation systems that produce professional animations following motion design principles — easing, non-linear movement, and visual hierarchy
- Design and implement agentic pipelines that chain multi-step reasoning and code generation to translate natural language prompts into editable animation code
- Develop evaluation frameworks to measure animation code quality using both automated metrics and expert motion design feedback
- Collaborate with motion designers and marketers to translate professional design knowledge into training data, prompts, and evaluation criteria
- Design and implement fine-tuning pipelines to teach models domain-specific animation styles and brand guidelines
- Create feedback loops between user preferences, expert input, and model performance to continuously improve generation quality
- Research and prototype new approaches for controllable, style-consistent code generation for motion graphics
Requirements
- 3+ years of experience in AI engineering, LLM systems, or related engineering roles
- Strong experience building LLM-powered systems — particularly code generation or programmatic output from natural language
- Experience designing and implementing agentic pipelines — multi-step reasoning, tool calling, autonomous task execution
- Ability to build production-ready ML/AI systems and pipelines
- Experience in fast-paced startup environments or shipping production software
- Strong programming and problem-solving skills
- Based in Berlin or able to work onsite in New York or San Francisco
This Role Is NOT For
- Computer vision, image recognition, or 3D generation backgrounds — these are explicitly not a fit
- Candidates who need rigid structure or cannot operate in ambiguity
- Those requiring visa sponsorship or relocation assistance
Tech Stack
TypeScript, React.js, Next.js, PostgreSQL, GCP/AWS, and a proprietary motion graphics engine. The team prioritizes learning velocity and end-to-end delivery.
Interview Process
- Intro call with the founders
- Technical discussion and system design conversation
- Practical technical exercise or ML discussion
- Final founder interview
Logistics
- Berlin onsite strongly preferred — remote from NYC or SF also considered
- No visa sponsorship or relocation assistance available
Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Hera.
