Your Role

Management consulting is an operational business. Every booking, every payroll accounting, every tax return follows a process — and the quality of these processes determines whether a consulting firm with fifty employees is sustainable or with five hundred. Most entities in our industry have never systematically questioned these processes. They work because experienced people know workarounds — not because the workflows are well thought out. Vogel is one of the most successful medium-sized consulting firms in Germany — several thousand medium-sized companies entrust us with their tax, commercial, and strategic issues. Established clients, long experience, strong growth base — and at the same time a setup that moves forward every day.

You have been building workflows and automations for internal operators for two to five years — in a workflow consultancy, an automation agency, as an Internal Platform Engineer in a scale-up, or as a Forward Deployed Engineer (internal). You have launched at least five productive workflows that save hours per day today — measured, documented, owned. n8n, Make, or Claude Code are familiar to you hands-on, Python or JavaScript at a script level are part of your toolkit, and you have integrated at least one LLM API in production. You are moving on because the phase where you build workflows for a tech product has become too confining for you — you want to apply the same leverage now in an industry where every hour of automation brings direct client benefit. At Vogel, you report directly to management — Joachim and Moritz Vogel as visible figures, with named responsibility — because the operations layer is being newly built here. Structures that sustain — established clients, long experience, strong growth base — and at the same time a setup that moves forward every day. No corporate straitjacket. No greenfield without foundation.

You are a hands-on builder with responsibility for development: around 80 to 90 percent of your time you will be building yourself — workflows, integrations, small internal tools for Vogel operators (tax consultants, tax assistants, payroll accountants, and in the future, consultants in Finance and Advisory). The remaining 10 to 20 percent you will be building the team: two to three Automation & AI Associates, who will deliver together with you. You do not speak directly with clients — your users are internal. You will take over the operational excellence of the core business from day one, in accounting, payroll, and advisory. The natural progression leads in twenty-four to thirty-six months to a Senior Manager Automation & AI role (management career) with ownership over process standards, automation, and operational integration across all locations.

Your Responsibility

Build and maintain workflows in production

• Identify the operational bottlenecks in Vogel's core processes (accounting, payroll, advisory) across all locations. Where does one person wait for another, where does someone enter data twice, where does the process break under stress?

• Build workflows yourself in n8n, Make, or Claude Code that remove these bottlenecks. Your standard: running productively with error handling, retry logic, and monitoring, not concepts in a slide deck.

• Establish production discipline from day one: test client before live client, versioned workflows, documented contracts against DATEV, Personio, and Vogel's internal systems. By the seventh workflow, nothing should break silently anymore.

Team Building

• Hire two to three Automation & AI Associates yourself and work hand in hand with them. You will be responsible for screening, interviewing, and conviction recommendations — power user profiles with builder experience, not pure business administrators with an interest in digitalization.

• You will take disciplinary responsibility for your Associates in agreement with management — performance reviews, escalation decisions, hiring support.

• Establish operational routines — weekly rhythm, standards for workflow documentation, tool conventions — which will later be rolled out to all locations.

Tool Architecture and Acquisition Integration

• Decide on the tool stack for the core operational business — n8n vs. Make, custom code components, DATEV interfaces, own integration layer. You will also work with external service providers in the tech sector.

• Develop integration playbooks for the operational integration of acquired entities in future acquisitions. Every acquisition is a stress test for your workflows — new locations will work according to Vogel's patterns within weeks.

• Coordinate with Corporate Development to ensure that the operational synergies defined in the business case for each acquisition are actually realized.

Your Perspectives

What you will have delivered after 6 months:

• You will have mapped the ten biggest operational bottlenecks in accounting, payroll, and advisory. Three of them will have already been resolved through productive workflows — with error handling, monitoring, and client benefit.

• You will have hired the first Associate Automation & AI — screening, interview, conviction recommendation, onboarding.

• You will have made an initial tool stack architecture decision (n8n vs. Make, DATEV integration layer, LLM API setup) and documented it in writing.

What you will have delivered after 12 months:

• You will have built your operations layer with two to three Associates. You will lead them technically and disciplinarily in agreement with management, and have completed your own quarterly feedback discussions.

• You will have at least ten running workflows with measurable hourly savings per client relationship — visible in the quarterly reports.

• You will have gone through the integration playbook for at least one acquisition — operational integration of new mandates, tool migration, workflow adjustment.

What you will have delivered after 24 months:

• Your operations layer will demonstrably support growth — client numbers and complexity will have increased, and the personnel curve will be flatter. Concrete impact in corporate reporting will be verifiable.

• You will be the escalation point for standard operational cases and architectural decisions across all locations. The workflows from your department will serve as a template for other locations.

• You will be a candidate for Senior Manager Automation & AI — through an independently built operations layer and demonstrable economies of scale, not just years of service.

Where the position is developing:

The next step is Senior Manager Automation & AI (management career) — however, this requires an independently built operations layer and demonstrable economies of scale, not just additional years of service. Beyond the Senior Manager level, the Director and eventually VP path opens up along our career framework.

What You Bring

Experience & Track Record

• You have two to five years of full-time hands-on workflow and automation building experience — in a workflow consultancy or automation agency, at a B2B scale-up as an Internal Platform Engineer or Internal Tools Lead, as a Forward Deployed Engineer (internal), or as a Senior RevOps with a demonstrable personal tool track record.

• You have launched at least five productive workflows that save hours per day today. Proof: Loom walkthrough or specific implementation references in your CV.

• You have previously technically guided a team of two to three junior builders — workflow review and coaching is sufficient, formal people management is not a prerequisite.

• Profiles that do not fit the above grid but bring substantial workflow/automation depth are explicitly invited to apply — we evaluate based on contribution, not labels. The advertised range calibrates to the primary profile. Those with a different background will start at a different market price and converge to the role level after twelve months of proven performance — the logic behind this is detailed in our compensation principles.

Skills & Working Method

• Tool fluency: hands-on in at least two of n8n, Make, Zapier, Claude Code, plus Python or JavaScript at script level for API calls and data transformations, solid SQL, reading and writing REST APIs.

• LLM Integration: at least one LLM API (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral) integrated in production — with prompt hygiene, retry logic, cost awareness.

• You work with AI as a natural tool — for process analysis, drafting, code generation, pattern recognition in operational data. Repetitive tasks are a stimulus for automation for you, not a fate.

• You break down processes intuitively: Where are the three stupid steps, which two can be collapsed, what remains? This is a mindset, not a learned skill.

• You can quickly familiarize yourself with operational domains that are new to you — tax consulting, payroll accounting, DATEV. You don't need to know this, but you will grasp the process logic within a few weeks.

• You communicate in a way that long-term Vogel operators trust you — you are changing the work methods of people who have been doing their jobs for twenty years without offending or overwhelming them.

Mindset & Personality

• You have the aspiration to set the highest standard in everything you deliver — not because someone is checking, but because mediocrity personally bothers you.

• You have a builder identity, not a consultant identity — you measure yourself by running workflows, not by concept slides. Anyone who shows a PowerPoint in an interview as proof instead of a Loom with a working tool is at the wrong table.

• You are comfortable with ambiguity — you receive requests like "accounting is slow, make it faster" and don't need a project brief.

• You have the humility to learn from practitioners. The tax consultant with twenty years of experience knows things about her process that are not in any diagram.

• Vogel is hierarchical in decision-making, flat in communication, autonomous in execution. Performance is celebrated, not hidden — those who want to advance because they are good will find the space here, without political camouflage and without consensus theater.

What you will not find with us

• No strategy consulting role in disguise. If your last job was MBB and you write PowerPoints that others are supposed to implement, this is the wrong table. We build, we don't delegate.

• No client contact. Your users are internal (tax consultants, tax assistants, payroll accountants). Clients speak with the domain professionals, not with Automation & AI.

• No greenfield platform building in an empty room. Vogel has over a hundred employees, established clients, and DATEV is running. What you build must work alongside ongoing operations — not in a sandbox.

• No partner company with competing self-interests. We are a company with a one-firm logic — one brand, one culture, one hiring bar. No management-by-committee, no consensus as an end in itself.

• No exiting building to a pure manager role. You build yourself — with 80 to 90 percent of your time. Those seeking a pure people management career are looking for a different position.

FAQ

1. What is Vogel — and where do you work?

Vogel is one of Germany's leading medium-sized consultancies — a family business since 1959, from Aalen — and is building the leading consulting platform for medium-sized businesses from it. We are growing across several locations: in Aalen/Ostwürttemberg as the established headquarters and in Munich as a new hub. At both locations, we are hiring across functions — from tax consulting to advisory and the strategic teams building the platform.

2. How are the salary bands to be understood?

Intentionally broad — and indicated at every point. We differentiate based on track record and market value, not on degree: scarce, highly sought-after profiles at the upper end, less scarce at the lower end. We calibrate exclusively on the market — two people with similar experience can earn differently with us.

3. How much — and how — do people work at Vogel?

Measurement is based on what you achieve, not on hours. But honestly: those looking for 9-to-5 are not our primary target audience. We are looking for people who work intensively out of their own drive because the tasks are worth it. How you manage your time is largely up to you. What we share: We work together in person — culture, sparring, and the best ideas emerge from daily proximity. We are not a remote company and do not have extensive home office policies; individual remote days are not a problem.

4. How does the application process work?

Lean, fast, transparent — and tiered by profile. For entry-level roles (internship, working student, career entry), typically two interviews and a short work sample are sufficient; experienced roles are slightly more extensive. For selected senior roles, we are exploring the possibility of including a joint workday in the future so that both sides can get to know each other better. Always applies: scheduled appointments, swift decisions, substantial feedback — regardless of the outcome.

5. How does variable compensation work?

Tied to performance quarterly, evaluated qualitatively. The scale increases with the level: up to 20% Associate, 27.5% Manager, 35% Senior Manager, 42.5% Director, 50% VP. The expected value for good performance — you meet the requirements, set your own accents, pass the keeper test — is around 50% of the maximum; the maximum bonus is not the norm. The focus is on a holistic assessment by your manager: ownership, quality, learning curve, collaboration, impact.

6. How do I develop myself — what are the career paths?

Two active paths: Mastery (technical depth, expert career) and Pioneer (leadership, management). You choose the direction after onboarding, usually in years 1-3. Career entry is not a special path, but the early part of the same journey — from working student or intern to Associate, for the best without a new application process.

7. Team, culture, vacation?

A shared lunch is an open daily offer — not mandatory; whoever wants to join can, everyone can eat at any time. In addition, dinners, social events, and offsites at regular intervals — not as a mandatory program, but because a good team also shares time outside of work. Benefits: well-thought-out and substantial, not symbolic. Vacation: 28 days.

8. I know someone — is there a referral bonus?

Yes — €2,500 for every successfully filled position (no internships). A brief context is sufficient: whom you are thinking of, for which role, why. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be substantial.

Compensation: €114,750 – €146,625 • Fix: €90k - €115k · Bonus: €24.75k - €31.625k · EV: €105.3k - €134.55k

• • OTE €114,750 – €146,625 • Fix: €90k - €115k · Bonus: €24.75k - €31.625k · EV: €105.3k - €134.55k

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