Software Engineer (Intern / Working Student)

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 Software Engineer (Intern / Working Student) 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 TU Munich, 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

One role, a few possible directions

Most of this role is product engineering: full-stack work on the features students and educators use every day. But we'd rather shape it around the person than force everyone through the same slot. Depending on where you're strong and what you want to get better at, you could lean towards:

• Product: Talking to users, building features end to end, making AI features feel genuinely useful rather than like another chatbot wrapper.
• Mobile: We're building our React Native app, and there's plenty to own if that's where your interest is.
• Platform and architecture: Effect, clean architecture, type-driven design, the AI pipelines behind everything. If that's the part you find interesting, there's real depth here.

You don't need to know which one you want on day one. Most people find out by building something.

What You'll Be Working On

You'll take ownership of your work and solve real user problems directly. Working alongside the founders and the engineering team, you'll connect what users actually need, how we design it and how we technically pull it off.

• 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 your ideas by pushing live code rather than sharing static designs.
• Data-backed intuition: You'll use a mix of user empathy and live analytics (PostHog) to find where people get stuck and fix it right away.
• Real ownership: You'll take features from top to bottom, handling the architecture, the actual coding and the final deployment. Your code goes to real students at real institutions, not to a sandbox.
• Ship fast, learn faster: 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
• Mobile: TypeScript, React Native, Expo
• Backend: Effect-based TypeScript services
• 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

• You can already build things: You've built and shipped something real, whether that's a side project, a university project that went further than it had to, or previous work at a company. We care about what you've made, not which semester you're in.
• 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.

We're flexible on hours and work around your lectures and exam periods. We'll agree on a setup that works for both sides.

Benefits

Benefits

• A nice office in the heart of Berlin with snacks, drinks and an office dog
• Working in a small but driven team built around performance and learning
• Flexible environment with a high degree of autonomy
• Real ownership from week one, not ticket work on the side of the roadmap
• Frequent team events and acemate parties! 🥳