Company details

HEADCOUNT

1-24

ORG TYPE

Startup

SECTOR

Technology & Digital

WEBSITE

https://www.cortea.ai

About the company

Cortea is a Berlin-based B2B SaaS startup building AI software to automate compliance and audit work, with a focus on regulated industries and frameworks like DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001, and GDPR. Public materials position the product as an end-to-end workflow tool that requests data, analyses documents, and produces audit-ready outputs faster. Cortea has publicly shared that the team grew from 2 to 14 people over the past year and raised a pre-seed round led by Cherry Ventures. The company operates as AI Audit Systems GmbH in Germany.

Locations and presence

Cortea recruits for Berlin as an office-first location, with job posts explicitly framing in-office work in central Berlin. The company’s legal address is in Berlin, and hiring materials focus on scaling the team from that base.

Palpable Score

63.0

/ 100

Cortea is an early-stage team that hires for 1–4 year “founder’s associate” style roles with unusually clear interview steps and visible learning support. The overall score is capped because there’s little public evidence yet of junior progression, retention, or repeat graduate-level cohorts.

Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

9.8

/ 20

The company hires “Founders Associate (Finance & Ops)” with a 1–4 year experience range, which is a realistic early-career entry point into bizops/finance.
Cortea hires “Founders Associate (Product)” at 2+ years and “Talent Acquisition Specialist” at 2+ years, which keeps early-career access open but mostly for post-entry profiles rather than new grads.
The company’s current role mix includes multiple “Founding” and “Senior/Staff” positions in product, design, and engineering, which reduces true entry-level volume.

Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

15.7

/ 20

The company publishes a specific interview flow for at least one role: intro call, role deep-dive on a real scenario, culture interview with a founder, then an on-site half-day problem session.
Cortea sets clear expectations in role descriptions about responsibilities and success scope, including concrete finance/ops ownership areas (planning, monthly close, investor relations, expansion setup).
The company uses a half-day on-site “jam” as part of several processes, which is transparent but still a meaningful time burden for candidates, and pay ranges are not consistently shown on every role page.

Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

14.0

/ 20

The company offers mentorship from experienced founders and frames the roles as working side-by-side with co-founders on core product and business problems.
Cortea lists a learning budget (courses and conferences) plus team lunches and offsites as recurring support for growth and team learning.
The company does not yet publish role-level ramp plans (30/60/90 days), structured pairing, or a written progression framework that early-career hires can lean on.

Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

15.5

/ 20

The company has multiple roles advertised with employer-provided salary ranges on public job boards (for example €60k–€100k for Talent Acquisition Manager and €80k–€110k for several engineering roles).
Cortea repeatedly states “competitive salary + meaningful equity” across roles, which supports long-term alignment and avoids the “cash only, no upside” pattern that can be common in tiny startups.
The company describes benefits like flexible vacation and a learning budget, but benefits detail is not consistently standardized across every listing, which limits comparability for early-career candidates.

Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

8.0

/ 20

The company has no meaningful public employee review base yet (no Glassdoor reviews or interview writeups for the Cortea profile), so retention and manager quality can’t be verified independently.
Cortea reports business traction signals like paying customers and quantified “manual work eliminated” outcomes, which can translate into strong early-career portfolio projects, but these are not people outcomes.
The company’s LinkedIn updates mention team growth from 2 to 14 over the past year, but public sources do not show junior promotions, time-to-progression, or repeat early-career hiring over multiple cycles.