WHU Jobs

acemate is building an AI learning & teaching platform for higher and further education institutions. We have strong traction, secured funding and are entering an exciting growth phase. We're looking for a passionate Product Engineer / Software Developer to drive our product forward and help us scale.

About acemate

Founded in 2024, acemate has quickly become the leading AI learning platform for higher and further education, trusted by top-tier institutions across four countries, including University of Cologne, WHU and the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (IHKs).

• Our Mission: Democratizing access to personalized learning. We don’t believe that AI will replace educators. Instead, we empower them to design and deliver personalized learning experiences at scale.
• Our Growth: We've raised pre-seed funding and are growing rapidly. While we focus on higher and further education in the DACH area today, we're already expanding into new regions and markets.
• Our Culture: We’re a young, driven team passionate about tackling the toughest challenges in education. We embrace builder culture and minimize scheduled meetings for ad-hoc discussions and maximized focus on coding and creating.

Tasks

What You'll Be Working On

You'll be taking ownership of the building process and directly solving user problems. Working right alongside the founders as a Product Engineer (Working Student), you'll connect the dots between what users actually need, how we design it, and how we technically pull it off.

Product Discovery & UX:

• No endless spec docs: Instead of writing long requirements, you'll speak directly with users to find their pain points and immediately start coding a solution.
• Production prototyping: Forget spending hours on Figma mocks when you can just prompt a functional UI quickly. You'll test out your ideas by pushing live code rather than sharing static designs.
• Data-backed intuition: You will use a mix of user empathy and live analytics (PostHog) to find where people get stuck and resolve it right away.

Product Development:

• Take full ownership of new features from top to bottom—handling the architecture, the actual coding, and the final deployment.
• Create and polish AI features so they deliver a genuinely magical experience, rather than just feeling like another basic chatbot wrapper.
• Work with a "ship fast, learn faster" mindset. You'll push updates out early to see how users react and use that data to iterate.

Past examples of things you might build:

• A Duolingo-inspired daily quiz system that keeps students engaged with their university materials.
• Complex AI pipelines designed to pull text and visuals from various documents and map those topics into knowledge graphs.
• A custom authorization engine built to manage the increasing complexity of multiple institutional environments.

Tech Stack:

• Frontend: TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS
• Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL)
• Infrastructure: Cloudflare (Workers, Pages, Workflows, R2, KV), Google Cloud (Gemini, Cloud Run)
• Tools: Sentry, Langfuse, PostHog, Stripe

If you don't know every single tool listed here from day one, that's completely fine. We trust your ability to pick things up quickly and learn new frameworks as we build.

Requirements

What We're Looking For

• Product Sense: You have a gut feeling for good UX/UI and can explain why a certain interface works or fails.
• User-First Mindset: You enjoy talking to users and translating their "issues" into solutions.
• Startup experience: You’re comfortable in fast-paced, evolving environments
• Ownership mindset: You think like a founder and treat the product like it’s yours.
• Commitment to excellence: You’re driven to go above and beyond when it matters.
• Curiosity and adaptability: Eager to learn new technologies and stay open to innovation.
• Balanced AI approach: You knew how to code before Cursor and Claude Code, but understand how to leverage them effectively
• Passion and purpose: High identification with our mission to transform education

Benefits

Benefits

• Competitive salary package with equity component
• Fully covered Deutschlandticket
• BusinessBike (bike or e-bike via leasing, also for private use )
• Working in a small but driven team built around performance and learning
• Flexible environment with high degree of autonomy
• Frequent team events and acemate parties!