Tech Lead / CTO (m/w/d)

The opportunity

Tax advisory has everything automation needs: structured data, recurring work, clear rules. Yet the profession never made the leap, because recurring does not mean uniform. Every case has its own twist, and the law keeps moving. Reasoning resolves exactly this variance. That is why the window is open now.

The model is no longer the scarce part. Expert knowledge and real case data are, and AI labs pay a premium for exactly this. Vogel holds what no AI-native player has: decades of accounting data, edge cases and judgment calls from several thousand mid-sized companies, audited and closed. It never leaves the house, and it becomes the edge of what you build.

The market is being reordered: four in ten tax advisors in Germany leave the profession within ten years, and many of their firms will find no successor. Vogel acquires established advisory firms and develops them further, and every acquisition adds to that base. We have already produced our own annual financial statements with AI. Today, that is one person with a tool. Turning it into a capability of the whole company is the job.

You own the technology that makes Vogel AI-first: the data layer above DATEV, the agent infrastructure on top, and the control layer without which nothing in this profession may go live. You decide the architecture and the stack of what we build. What it does and in which order is decided together with Operations and Moritz Vogel in the role of chief product officer, close to the advisors who use it; you shape it with them. You report to and work directly with Moritz Vogel.

What you'll do

Architecture above DATEV

• Build the data layer above DATEV. DATEV stays the system of record (for now); the value is created in the layer above it, designed to outlive the system beneath.

• Choose and build the agent infrastructure: framework, orchestration, versioning, observability. You answer these questions with code, not with a slide deck.

• Make integration a capability, not a project: every client brings their own upstream systems, and today each connection is built by hand. Build the layer those systems plug into, so what makes a client different arrives as context the agents read, never as custom code. One more client must never mean one more integration project.

Reproducibility and control

• A tax advisor must get the same result twice, and an auditor must be able to trace it. Probabilistic where there is variance, deterministic where there are numbers.

• Build the control layer so that a certified professional sees within seconds what an agent did (version, source, decision) and can sign off on it.

• Build evaluation on decades of audited, completed work.

Team and scale

• Make the architecture calls: design, stack, build or buy for the layer. Nobody has decided it for you, and nobody will overrule it by committee.

• Hire and lead the engineering team. The budget for your first engineers is approved. You start hiring in your first quarter.

• Make every acquired firm land on the same base, so technology scales with every acquisition. And stay in the code: you commit and you review.

Questions you'll answer

• Where exactly does probabilistic end and deterministic begin?

• How does a system learn from closed cases without losing its reproducibility?

• A new client arrives with their own systems. What may change in the system, and what may not?

What success looks like

• 6 months: Architecture decided. One real use case from the core business runs in production and is used daily. Your first engineers are hired.

• 12 months: Several agentic use cases in regular operation. The control layer holds up in a real review, and evaluation runs against closed cases, not test data.

• 24 months: Automation is a capability of the organization, not of individuals. Every acquired firm runs on the same base, and your team ships without you in the room.

Where it leads: the full CTO mandate, a management career earned by contribution, not by years served.

What you bring

• You have built something that ran in production and was used by people who did not build it, as founding engineer, engineering lead, technical co-founder or in a comparable role.

• You have taken agentic systems into production and know where they break.

• You have integrated against systems that fight back: legacy ERPs, banking backends, badly documented interfaces.

• You write production code. AI is your everyday tool, and your position on the stack comes from what you built and threw away.

• You work in German, because our clients and tax advisors do, and you build in person in Munich.

• You learn from practitioners, and you set the highest standard in everything you ship, not because someone checks, but because mediocrity bothers you.

A plus, not a requirement

• A regulated field where mistakes have consequences: fintech, banking tech, payments (N26, Trade Republic, Solaris, Klarna, Mollie, Pleo) or software for professional services (Personio, Workato).

• Knowledge of accounting, tax or DATEV.

• No conventional CV required: a technical co-founder of a sold or failed product, or someone who can show publicly what they have built, is explicitly invited. We assess contribution, not labels. The salary range shown refers to the primary profile; a different background starts at a different market price and converges after twelve months of proven performance.

What this role is and what it isn't

• Building, not managing. You lead engineers and stay in the code. If you want to run managers, this is the wrong role.

• An operating company, not a software vendor. The users are our own teams. IT operations, tool rollouts and the product work sit with Operations; what we build and in which order is decided together with management. You own how it is built and run.

• In person in Munich, not a distributed team. An architecture being decided and a team finding its standards need a shared room.

Why join us

• Turn our data into the edge. Decades of audited, completed work become the test every agent has to pass before a human sees its result.

• Leverage through acquisitions. Every firm that joins Vogel runs on what you build. One decision of yours reaches several thousand clients from day one, and more with every acquisition.

• Yours to decide. The architecture and the stack of this layer are open. Hierarchical in decisions, flat in communication, autonomous in execution. Performance is celebrated, not hidden, without politics and without consensus theater.

• Substance behind you. A profitable, growing business. No funding round decides whether your team exists.

The FAQ below is in German, as is our working day.

FAQ

• Was ist Vogel – und wo arbeitet ihr?

Vogel ist eine der führenden Mittelstandsberatungen Deutschlands – seit 1959, inhabergeführt in zweiter Generation, mit eigenem Kapital – und baut daraus die führende Beratungsplattform für den Mittelstand. Wir arbeiten an drei Standorten: Aalen als gewachsenem Stammsitz, Bopfingen im Kerngeschäft und München als neuem Hub. An allen dreien suchen wir quer durch die Funktionen – von Steuerberatung über Beratung bis zu den Teams, die das Fundament darunter bauen.

• Wie sind die Gehaltsbänder zu verstehen?

Bewusst breit – und an jeder Stelle ausgewiesen, bevor du dich bewirbst. Wir differenzieren nach Track Record und Marktwert, nicht nach Abschluss: knappe, stark gefragte Profile am oberen Ende, weniger knappe am unteren. Die ausgewiesene Spanne ist kein Verhandlungsspielraum, sondern eine Profil-Skala – zwei Menschen mit ähnlicher Erfahrung können bei uns unterschiedlich verdienen. Was das obere Ende bestimmt, ist der Reifegrad, nicht die Zahl der Berufsjahre und nicht das Verhandlungsgeschick.

• Wie viel – und wie – wird bei Vogel gearbeitet?

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