Founders Associate

Job description

🌍 About Zauber After co-founding and scaling Forto https://forto.com to over $600M in funding, I took a step back to reflect on what's still broken in global logistics. The answer was clear: it's still a human-first, spreadsheet-heavy industry, full of repetitive processes and broken system interoperability. With the rise of AI agents, we now have the tools to rethink that from the ground up. Zauber builds autonomous agents for the global logistics industry, AI workers that handle operational tasks, talk to systems and humans alike, and get better every day. 🚢 We're already live with global logistics leaders in Europe and Asia 💰 Backed by P9 - one of Europe's top early-stage funds 📈 Growing fast and hiring exceptional talent to join early We are now looking for an exceptional Founders Associate to help us scale Zauber into its next phase. This is a full-time role with significant responsibility, designed for someone who wants to operate at the center of a fast-growing company and grow into a senior operating or founding role over time. 🧠 What You'll Do You'll be a core part of a small and fast-moving team, working directly with the founders on the highest-leverage problems across the company. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role where you will help us scale both product and company operations, while taking end-to-end responsibility for critical workstreams. • Own and run cross-functional projects across finance, operations, compliance, and people • Build and manage internal systems, tooling, and automations that let the company scale • Lead recruiting efforts end-to-end and support onboarding of new team members • Support go-to-market initiatives and help bring our agents to enterprise customers • Step into whatever challenge moves the company forward, from board prep to vendor management 👤 You Might Be a Fit If You... • Have already proven yourself in a generalist or operating role and want more responsibility • Enjoy solving a wide range of problems in dynamic, ambiguous environments • Take full ownership and pride in execution, including the unglamorous details • Are able to switch between big-picture thinking and detailed execution within the same day • Are curious about startups, AI, and how category-defining companies get built • Aspire to build something meaningful and potentially start your own company later 🛠 What You Bring • 2+ years of experience in generalist, operating, consulting, or founding roles, ideally in early-stage or high-agency environments • A technical background or strong intuition for AI, software, and automation, with the ability to build internal tooling yourself • Strong communication skills in both German and English • High integrity, strong work ethic, and a sense of urgency • Comfort owning outcomes end-to-end without needing close supervision 📍 Location & Logistics • Berlin office, in person preferred • Start: as soon as possible • Full-time, permanent role • Competitive salary plus meaningful equity participation 💼 What We Offer • A role with real responsibility and end-to-end ownership from day one • Meaningful equity in one of Europe's most ambitious AI companies • A close-knit team that values action, clarity, and customer impact • Direct access to experienced operators and founders, with a clear path to grow into senior operating or founding responsibility • The chance to shape one of Europe's most ambitious AI startups during its formative years 🚀 Why Now We're not a demo company. We're in production with real customers, in one of the world's most critical and complex industries. Demand is not our bottleneck, execution is. Logistics remains largely untouched by intelligent automation. Legacy systems, manual processes, and fragmented workflows make it one of the most fertile grounds for AI transformation. This is your opportunity to learn company building by doing, at a level of responsibility that is hard to find anywhere else. You will not be a passive observer but an active driver of what gets built and how we grow. We envision a world where every shipment is proactively managed by intelligent agents, where operators have superhuman capabilities at their fingertips, and trade never stalls. 🇪🇺 Building from Europe What drives us personally is the belief that Europe's long-term prosperity and sovereignty depend on a strong economic engine. We need more AI product-first European global champions on the world stage. Our mission is to build one of the biggest automation companies in the world, from Europe. While our HQ will be in Europe, we will relentlessly benchmark ourselves with the best globally and sell internationally from the beginning.