Lead AI Engineer - Generative AI & NLP (€85,000 - €100,000)
Location: Germany (Hybrid – regular remote working)
Employment Type: Permanent
Salary: Competitive, transparent salary bands
Visa Sponsorship Unavailable
A leading European data and AI consultancy is supporting organisations across multiple industries with large-scale digital transformation initiatives. With a strong track record delivering production-grade data, machine learning, and AI solutions, the company partners with both mid-sized businesses and global enterprises to unlock value from data.
The team is now looking for a Lead AI Engineer with deep expertise in NLP, LLMs, and Generative AI to act as a subject matter expert across multiple client engagements and internal initiatives.
The Role
You’ll operate as a technical authority for NLP and Generative AI, supporting high-impact customer projects while shaping internal capabilities and offerings. This is a senior, hands-on role combining technical leadership, solution design, mentoring, and client-facing advisory work.
You’ll design and deliver scalable, production-ready GenAI systems while helping teams and clients navigate trade-offs around performance, latency, cost, and complexity.
What You’ll Be Doing
Technical Leadership and Expertise
* Act as a subject matter expert and force multiplier for NLP, LLM, and agent-based systems across multiple projects.
* Take end-to-end ownership of one or more focus areas within NLP and Generative AI.
* Serve as the primary technical point of contact for complex AI topics.
Solution Design and Delivery
* Lead the technical design of NLP and GenAI systems addressing real-world business challenges.
* Architect solutions with a strong focus on scalability, robustness, latency, and cost efficiency.
* Ensure AI systems are production-ready and meet enterprise-grade standards.
Client and Stakeholder Engagement
* Work as a technical lead on customer projects, collaborating closely with client stakeholders.
* Present solution concepts and guide technical discussions during delivery, proposal, and acquisition phases.
* Translate complex AI concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences.
Mentorship and Team Enablement
* Guide and support less experienced team members.
* Provide constructive feedback and hands-on mentoring.
* Contribute to building internal best practices and standards.
Innovation and Thought Leadership
* Contribute to internal product development and expansion of the GenAI service portfolio.
* Support technical marketing, enablement, and thought leadership activities.
* Continuously track advancements in NLP, LLMs, tools, and research and apply them in practice.
What We’re Looking For
Core Experience
* 5+ years of professional experience in data science, NLP, machine learning, or Generative AI.
* Proven experience building and deploying NLP- and LLM-based systems in production environments.
* Deep knowledge of LLM APIs, agent frameworks, vector databases, retrieval approaches, and evaluation techniques.
* Strong experience with modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch.
* Hands-on experience with fine-tuning, post-training, and inference-time optimisation.
Engineering and Architecture
* Ability to write clean, performant, and scalable production code.
* Experience designing cloud-based architectures.
* Familiarity with MLOps, CI/CD, and deployment workflows on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Consulting and Communication
* Confident acting as a technical counterpart to customers.
* Strong communication skills across technical and business audiences.
* Structured, proactive, and independent working style.
Languages
* Very good German and English skills (C1 level or higher).
What’s On Offer
* Challenging data and AI projects across a wide range of industries
* Clear opportunities for professional and personal development
* Structured feedback, learning paths, and mentoring programmes
* Open, collaborative culture with flat hierarchies and fast decision-making
* Flexible hybrid working with a modern office base in Germany
* Transparent and market-aligned salary bands
* Additional benefits including mobility support, wellness programmes, high-quality equipment, and regular team events