---
title: 'Principal Product & Brand Designer (m/f/x) at Cortea AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-product-brand-designer-m-f-x-cortea-ai-berlin-3hq99qxgfj69'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Principal Product & Brand Designer (m/f/x) at Cortea AI

- **Company:** Cortea AI
- **Location:** Berlin, Germany
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cortea/5151cb4c-ecc1-4621-85dd-9f8c3c207472

## Job description

## BUILD SOMETHING THAT TRULY MATTERS

At Cortea, we envision a world where every audit is proactively managed by humans and AI agents collaboratively. Where auditing professionals have superhuman capabilities at their fingertips to strengthen the trust in the world's most critical systems.

We're not just improving auditing workflows, we're redefining how audits are done from the ground up. With a rapidly growing, global customer base and backing from world-class investors, the market is ready. What we ship next decides how big this gets.

This is your chance to join a team of sharp, ambitious and kind builders extremely early. Shape the company at its pivotal moment and build something that truly matters.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

At Cortea, design earns trust, and we sell to an industry that exists to produce it. Auditors are paid to be skeptical, and people judge quality by what they can see: the product, the website, the deck a partner opens in a boardroom, the newsletter someone reads with their first coffee. All of it is Cortea.

This is a role for someone with great taste in designing software and AI systems. You'll find novel patterns for problems that haven't existed in software before, and you'll own how Cortea looks and feels to the outside world.

Roughly 70% product, 30% brand. The product work is deep, expert-facing and systems-heavy. As we are doubling down on design, you'll be working on taking the core flows to the next level. The brand work is yours to own outright: website, marketing and sales visuals, newsletter, event and content assets. It'll be on screen in a Big4 boardroom, in every customer's inbox, and on the wall at the events we host. A lot of surface for one designer, and all of it yours.

We're not looking for someone to ask whether the logo goes left or right. We're looking for someone with opinions.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Work directly with our founders, engineers, and customers to turn audit flows into intuitive, delightful interfaces
- Work with Jonas http://linkedin.com/in/jonas-brinkhoff/?skipRedirect=true on product design and design strategy overall
- Own our brand designs and visuals
- Evolve our visual identity and design system
- Take increasing ownership of brand direction. Website, marketing and sales material, content and event assets
- Help shape the product vision, roadmap, and user experience standards
- Run usability tests, build user feedback loops, and bring a systems mindset to design decisions

## YOU'LL BE GREAT AT THIS IF YOU

- Have product design experience in B2B / SaaS, ideally in fast-moving startups.
- Think in experiences, not screens. With taste you can defend. Product and brand are one surface; you can explain why details work, and you call out when they don’t.
- Want to create a unique brand, which auditors love. Identify, marketing, web should be a draw, not a tax. Taste and passion matter more than volume.
- Can hold complexity without losing clarity. You turn configuration-heavy, expert workflows into clear systems.
- Use AI without sacrificing quality. You've worked out which parts of the job benefit from automation and which need your judgment.
- Work well in ambiguity. You take rough direction and deliver great work without handholding.
- Have low ego. Best idea wins. You give and take feedback without making it about you.

Titles are fuzzy. If you're operating at principal level, or you're currently freelancing and curious rather than actively looking, talk to us anyway.

## WHAT YOU WILL GET

- Full brand ownership, shape how the product feels. Work face-to-face with experienced founders and learn directly from customer insights.
- Real influence on strategy. In a small team of excellent engineers and operators with high autonomy, you will shape product direction. Best idea wins, regardless of seniority.
- Fast, ambitious, and fun team. Decisions get made in hours, not weeks. Rapid experimentation is the default.
- Meaningful equity and competitive salary. You are one of the first to build this, and you share in the upside.
- A mission that matters. Building intelligent systems for a $200bn industry from Berlin, with AI at the core

## INTERVIEW PROCESS

- First Call — Intro on what we do with Liza https://www.linkedin.com/in/liza-shaban/?skipRedirect=true
- Second Call — Portfolio walkthrough with Jonas http://linkedin.com/in/jonas-brinkhoff/?skipRedirect=true
- Third Call — Get to know our product and culture with our Co-Founder Valentin https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentinneumann/
- On-site Day — Meet our full team in our Berlin office and work on a real problem together with us.

[https://app.ashbyhq.com/api/images/user-content/316125b8-3855-479e-a082-a30caf346d45/1ddbeed3-b4e6-4a47-8872-d5cfeee3e842/image.png]

## About Cortea AI

## Company Overview
- **One‑liner**: Cortea builds purpose‑built AI agents that help professional audit firms review work, surface inconsistencies, and produce traceable, defensible outputs while keeping human judgment in control.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage; raised €12M / $3.4M)
- **Headquarters**: Berlin, Germany (with offices in France and the Netherlands)
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Valentin Neumann (CEO, former auditor at KPMG and early‑stage employee at N26) & Philipp Hövelmann (CPO, former CTO at audibene)

## Core Business
- **Industries**: Audit automation, financial technology, enterprise AI
- **Target customers**: B2B – professional audit firms (financial, IT, internal audit, and advisory practices)
- **Mission**: Provide high‑quality, transparent AI so auditors can review work more easily and focus on professional judgment – ultimately changing how trust is created in the global economy.

## Products & Services
- **AI Agents for Audit**: A suite of agents grounded in ISA, IFRS, HGB, IDW, and other audit standards. Key capabilities:
  - **Evidence Testing**: Automates manual testing, evidence review, and sample checks with full traceability.
  - **Financial Data Validation**: Validates figures against source documents and builds an audit trail ready for sign‑off.
  - **Disclosure & Compliance Checklists**: Runs automated completeness checks against IFRS, HGB, local GAAP, and IDW disclosure requirements.
  - **Risk Analysis & Audit Planning**: Identifies risk areas earlier and builds defensible audit plans aligned with ISA 315.
  - **Audit Team Collaboration**: Assigns tasks, tracks progress, and keeps milestones on schedule.
  - **File Requests**: Tracks requests, submissions, and engagement files to prevent gaps.
- **Platform Type**: SaaS – fully web‑based, uses a “white‑box” approach so every AI decision provides a verifiable logic path.
- **Security & Compliance**: Designed to meet ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and professional secrecy obligations; no client data is used to train models.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding **€12M / $3.4M** (Seed round, April 2025)
- **Notable Investors**:
  - Lead: **Cherry Ventures**
  - Co‑participants: **Dawn Capital**, **Mosaic Ventures**, **Discovery Ventures**
  - Notable angels: Larry Bradley (former Global Head of Audit, KPMG), Mehdi Ghissassi (Director Product, DeepMind), Jens Rassloff (Chairman Parloa), and others.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew **+63.6% YoY** to 12 employees (2024→2025).
  - **8 open positions** as of mid‑2025 (Senior Auditor, Chief of Staff, Fullstack Engineer, AI Product Manager, Founding Product Engineer, AI Audit Engineer, Data Engineer, Software Engineer).
  - Active in multiple geographies (Germany, France, Netherlands).

## Competitive Advantages
- **White‑Box AI**: Unlike black‑box models, Cortea’s agents provide a transparent, verifiable logic path – critical for regulated audits.
- **Domain‑Deep Team**: Founders and advisors include former KPMG auditors, BCG partners, and DeepMind PMs; methodology is built into the product from day one.
- **Methodology‑First**: Every agent speaks the language of ISA, IFRS, IDW, and local standards – results are professionally defensible.
- **Enterprise‑Grade Security**: ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and strict professional secrecy – no client data ever used for training.
- **AI‑Native Culture**: The company itself is built to operate like an AI‑first team – small, fast, shipping weekly, not quarterly.

## Strategic Focus
- **Deepen Audit‑AI Integration**: Continue expanding agent capabilities (evidence testing, disclosure checklists, risk planning) to cover the full audit lifecycle.
- **Scale Go‑to‑Market**: Use the fresh seed funding to build sales and customer success, especially in DACH, France, and the Netherlands.
- **Maintain Quality & Trust**: Stay “methodology first” and keep human judgment central – the auditor reviews, approves, and signs every conclusion.
- **Attract Top Talent**: Hiring aggressively for engineering, product management, and audit‑specialist roles to accelerate product development.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Builders, not managers” – bias for action, ship this week, not next quarter. Small team (12 people), high ownership, direct feedback, low ego.
- **Remote / Hybrid / Office**: Roles are advertised as **on‑site in Berlin** (e.g., Marketing, Engineering). However, the company already has distributed presence (France, Netherlands), so some flexibility may be possible – confirm during application.
- **Notable Perks / Engineering Culture**:
  - Everyone uses AI to multiply their own output – an “AI‑native” company, not just an AI product.
  - Deep work environment: “We love going deep” – they look for people who have gone unusually deep on a problem, regardless of domain.
  - High‑performance + warmth: Ambitious but not arrogant, human at heart.
  - Build with rigor and care – the work directly shapes how trust is created in the global economy.

## Sources
1. [Cortea Careers Page](https://cortea.ai/careers)
2. [Cortea Company Page](https://www.cortea.ai/company)
3. [Cortea Homepage](https://cortea.ai/)
4. [Cortea LinkedIn](https://de.linkedin.com/company/cortea-ai)
5. [Cortea Jobs on Ashby](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cortea)

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