top of page

Founders Associate

Who we are

Arqus is a space defence company. Our mission is to keep order in orbit. Just as a fighter jet secures the skies and a navy ship secures the seas, we are building the systems that will protect every asset above us, the satellites our economies, our security, and our daily lives now depend on.

Space has become contested. As the orbital domain fills with infrastructure and threats alike, Europe cannot afford to leave its most critical assets undefended. We believe Europe must have sovereign means to deter, defend, and uphold law and order beyond the atmosphere, and we take the responsibility of building those means seriously.

​

We are an ambitious team of engineers, physicists, and operators applying directed-energy and autonomy to one of the hardest problems there is. We are looking for mission-driven people who want to defend the high ground, and who welcome honest debate about the use of force in space, its limits, and its ethics.

Your Role & Responsibilities

You work directly with the three founders on whatever matters most that week. Fundraising, grant and programme applications, investor and partner materials, financial planning, hiring, and the operations that keep a fast-growing defence company running. You turn the founders' priorities into finished work: the deck that goes out, the application that gets submitted, the process that no longer depends on one person. You own the full chain: brief, research, drafting, coordination, submission, and follow-up. If something falls through the cracks, it is yours to catch.
Our work spans field tests, investors, defence programmes, and partners, often in the same week. Timelines are short: we build the minimum thing that genuinely works, put it in front of stakeholders, and then make it good. We do field tests, live failures, and iterate fast. The expectation is not that you know everything, it is that you figure it out fast, get it running, and refine later. If you need a structured environment to do your best work, this is probably not the right fit. If you thrive without one, it is.

What you’ll build

  • Investor materials, data rooms, and fundraising processes alongside the CEO

  • Applications for non-dilutive funding and for defence and space programmes at ESA, NATO, EU, and national level

  • Financial models, budgets, and reporting to investors and funding bodies

  • Hiring pipelines, onboarding, and the first people processes of the company

  • Partner and customer materials, event preparation, and follow-up

  • Internal operations: tools, contracts, procurement support, and the processes we will scale on

What we are looking for

You must have NATO member state citizenship.
 

Required
 

  • Degree in Business, Engineering, Economics, or equivalent

  • 1–3 years in a startup, VC, consulting, or the defence or space sector, or a strong graduate with demonstrable ownership

  • Excellent written English: you turn a messy brief into a document that is ready to send

  • Comfortable with numbers: financial models, budgets, and cap tables

  • You have run projects end to end, not just contributed to them

  • Fluent in German for dealing with local authorities and partners
     

Good to Have
 

  • Technical background, or the curiosity to understand our hardware in depth

  • Experience with grant applications or public funding programmes

  • Defence, space, or deep-tech startup experience

  • Familiarity with export control or defence procurement
     

Full-time, on-site in Munich. Early-employee equity.

bottom of page