Senior AI Engineer (f/m/d)

Awin AG seeks a Senior AI Engineer to design and operate a shared platform for AI development. The role focuses on enabling other teams to build safe, efficient, and scalable AI-powered products through robust infrastructure and reusable tools.

This position sits at the core of Awin’s AI strategy, focusing on the shared platform and enablement layer that supports the entire organization. The engineer will define, build, and operate the technical foundations—including internal APIs, SDKs, and architecture patterns—that allow other teams to develop AI products safely and consistently. The role is pivotal in establishing production readiness, reliability, and operational excellence for AI services across the company.

Responsibilities

• Design, construct, and refine shared AI platform capabilities that serve multiple internal teams.
• Establish and enhance platform architecture, technical standards, and recommended patterns for AI development.
• Develop and maintain reusable internal APIs, SDKs, templates, and reference implementations.
• Increase the reliability, scalability, and operational maturity of services owned by the platform team.
• Strengthen CI/CD pipelines, release engineering, cloud runtime patterns, and service lifecycle management.
• Enhance platform observability via improved tracing, monitoring, debugging, and production feedback loops.
• Define engineering and operational standards for what constitutes production-ready AI services.
• Collaborate with product teams to identify recurring needs and transform them into reusable platform features.
• Make pragmatic build-versus-buy decisions, favoring simple and durable solutions over complexity.
• Partner with Architecture, Security, Product, and engineering groups to ensure the platform is practical, secure, and easy to adopt.
• Write clean, secure, and well-tested code while promoting strong engineering practices within the team.
• Mentor fellow engineers and contribute to technical direction, knowledge sharing, and platform strategy.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering fundamentals with a track record of building production systems.
• Extensive experience in backend and platform engineering.
• Solid system design and architecture skills, particularly for shared services or internal platforms.
• Practical experience owning systems in production, including deployment, monitoring, support, and incident handling.
• Deep understanding of reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
• Hands-on experience with cloud environments and modern release engineering practices.
• Experience designing reusable APIs, libraries, SDKs, or internal engineering capabilities.
• Proficiency in Python and/or JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Experience building or contributing to AI or LLM-powered systems in production.
• Good understanding of LLM integration patterns, model APIs, prompts, and engineering trade-offs in AI systems.
• Knowledge of how to make AI systems observable, testable, and ready for production.
• Comfortable working across the full service lifecycle, from design to deployment and improvement.
• Understanding of information security and designing platform capabilities with security in mind.
• Experience applying unit testing, continuous integration, and continuous deployment.
• Strong communication skills, both synchronous and asynchronous.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and help shape technical direction when paths are not fully defined.
• A platform mindset: designing for reuse, clarity, and long-term maintainability beyond single-team features.

Nice to have

• Experience building internal developer platforms or shared engineering tooling.
• Knowledge of AI platform architecture, model access layers, orchestration patterns, or reusable AI infrastructure.
• Familiarity with AI observability tools such as LangSmith or similar tracing/evaluation platforms.
• Experience with evaluation workflows, regression checks, and quality gates for AI systems.
• Understanding of cost visibility, usage attribution, or FinOps-style patterns for AI workloads.
• Experience working in environments where multiple teams consume shared services.
• Background in improving developer experience through templates, examples, SDKs, or documentation.
• Ability to introduce standards that improve quality without creating unnecessary process.

What the company offers

• Four-day Flexi-Week with one lighter or completely disconnected day per week at full pay.
• Hybrid/remote working scheme designed to foster a culture of mutual trust and working flexibility.
• Monthly allowance to cover part of running costs and a furniture package for home workspace setup.
• Support and access to various initiatives and sports offers for mental and physical wellbeing.
• Extensive training suite, Awin Academy, for professional and personal growth.
• Peer-to-peer recognition programme with vouchers to thank and reward colleagues.

About the company

Awin AG is part of the Axel Springer group and maintains a dynamic, social, and inclusive culture. The company champions uniqueness and authenticity, welcoming all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. Diversity and inclusion are paramount, and Awin actively pursues and hires diverse team members to reflect this commitment.

• Dynamic, social, and inclusive culture.
• Diversity & Inclusion are paramount, with active efforts to hire diverse team members.
• Champions uniqueness and authenticity.
• Welcomes all backgrounds, identities, and experiences.