Founding Engineer

Autonomous vehicle manufacturers spent millions validating their own automated driving systems. We have proven that our software can do this substantially cheaper and faster. The core of the software is built and now we need to turn it into a real platform, this is where you come in. Not employee #100. Employee #1!

Why Aptly exists

Everyone building automated vehicles faces the same question: how do you prove the thing actually drives the way it should? Today the answer is brute force. Expensive engineers ride along in test cars or sit through hours of driving footage, checking behaviour by hand. It’s slow, it doesn’t scale, and it’s a big reason automated driving takes so long to reach the road.

Aptly, a fresh spin-off of TNO, automates that. Our platform lets manufacturers define the safe and responsible driving behaviour they want as explicit rules (traffic law, but also rules for comfortable and predictable driving), then automatically checks recorded or simulated driving data against those rules. Load your data, and half an hour later you draw conclusions that used to take weeks.

The product contains no trained AI. We validate AI systems, and having an AI validate an AI is kind of weird. It’s deterministic by design, and that’s exactly why customers can trust its verdicts.

TNO only let us spin out after we had proven demand: multiple successful proof-of-concepts and a first customer signed up to pay for the product, with a strong pipeline in automotive behind it. In the words of our COO: “Our growth bottleneck right now is the product.” That’s where you come in.

The team

Three founders, and then you. Henk (CEO) drives the commercial side, Marjolijn (COO) runs operations, and Erwin (CTO) spent the past decade at TNO on one question: how do you determine whether an automated vehicle is safe? An external development partner is building

the first version of the platform; you’ll guide them, and over time take their work in house.

What you’ll do

Short version: turn a proven proof of concept into a real product, and own how it’s built.

• Own the platform architecture end to end. Those decisions currently sit with an external party; we want them in house, in your hands.
• Turn our containerized Python algorithms into a real platform: APIs, large-scale data ingestion, jobs distributed automatically across workers.
• Build hands-on. In the beginning you’ll write a large share of the code yourself.
• Deploy into customers’ environments. Data volumes are huge and customers won’t share their data, so we run on their cloud (AWS first) or on-prem. Keep us portable.
• Be Erwin’s technical counterweight: when he brings a great idea, tell him what it does to the architecture and the cloud bill.
• Later on: hire the engineering team and set our engineering practices.

The domain algorithms stay with Erwin. Everything around them is yours.

Tech stack

Platform: TypeScript (Next.js and NestJS on Node.js).

Algorithms: Python.

Cloud: Cloud portable (i.e., as cloud-agnostic as possible), but our first client is using AWS.

An architecture blueprint exists as a starting point. Improve it where you have good reasons; don’t rip it out for sport.

What will make you successful

• Around 5+ years building backend systems and cloud platforms: containers, distributed processing, large data volumes, CI/CD.
• At least one long stint of 3+ years building somewhere. As Erwin puts it: “You need to see the consequences of the decisions you make in your designs.”
• Architect-level thinking with your hands still in the code. You can draw the whole system, then build it.
• A team player who likes being challenged. Brilliant lone wolves won’t be happy here.
• Ownership. If you don’t know something, you find out and make it work. You don’t need a founding role on your CV; smart, eager and accountable beats a perfect track record.

Let’s be honest about the trade

This is a founding engineer role, not a founder role. The base salary is solid but below big-tech level (100,000 base + 3% RSU starting); equity is part of the package, because you should win when Aptly wins and we believe in skin-in-the-game. The company is weeks old, so some things are still being invented as we go. And we’d like you in our Eindhoven office around two-three days a week: with four people, being in the same room matters.

What you get

• Real authority, by design. In our COO’s words: “This person is bringing something we see as a gap. Which means, by definition, they have to have authority.”
• A true greenfield with a paying customer already waiting.
• Base salary plus meaningful equity.
• A front-row seat as the company grows, and the chance to build the engineering team around you.

Ready to build it?

You’ve already built platforms around someone else’s decisions. Here’s one that’s yours from line one. Sounds like your kind of job? Let’s talk.

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