Carv.com provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetics.

Lead Applied AI Engineer
- On-site, Hybrid
- Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Job description
We are looking for a Lead Applied AI Engineer to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems that deliver measurable business impact. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who combines deep technical expertise in modern AI (LLMs, deep learning, ML systems) with strong product intuition and engineering rigor.
You will lead applied AI initiatives end-to-end, from experimentation and prototyping to scalable deployment, and help shape our AI strategy, architecture, and technical standards.
If you enjoy turning cutting-edge research into reliable, high-impact products, this role is for you.
What You’ll Do
Technical Leadership
Architect and implement scalable AI/ML systems in production environments
Lead the design and deployment of LLM-based applications (RAG, agents, fine-tuning, evaluation frameworks)
Establish best practices for model evaluation, monitoring, and continuous improvement
Drive experimentation and rapid prototyping to validate AI use cases
Hands-On Development
Build and optimize pipelines for data ingestion, training, inference, and evaluation
Develop APIs and services that integrate AI capabilities into core products
Improve performance, latency, cost efficiency, and reliability of AI systems
Work with modern AI stacks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain/LlamaIndex, vector DBs, orchestration frameworks)
Cross-Functional Impact
Partner with Product, Design, and Engineering to identify high-impact AI opportunities
Translate business problems into AI solutions with measurable outcomes
Mentor and guide AI/ML engineers
Contribute to hiring, technical standards, and long-term AI roadmap
What Makes You a Great Fit
You think in systems, not just models
You care about shipping real-world impact, not just research metrics
You balance speed with engineering excellence
You’re comfortable navigating ambiguity and defining structure
You lead by example and elevate those around you
Why Join Us?
This is an opportunity to join a company redefining recruitment through AI and automation. You’ll work directly with leadership, bringing 15+ years of SaaS and recruitment tech experience, in a high-growth, high-ownership environment where your impact will shape the future of our enterprise motion.
What’s in It for You
Competitive compensation: and performance upside
Stock options: participate in the value you help create
Top-tier tools: (MacBook Pro + personal development budget)
Hybrid work: and occasional travel
Clear growth path: into senior/strategic roles as our enterprise segment expands
Job requirements
6+ years of experience in software engineering or machine learning
3+ years building and deploying ML systems in production
Strong experience with LLMs and modern AI application patterns (RAG, embeddings, evaluation, prompt engineering)
Proficiency in Python and modern backend frameworks
Experience with cloud infrastructure (preferably GCP)
Solid understanding of data pipelines, distributed systems, and scalable architecture
Strong Plus
Experience with fine-tuning large models
MLOps and model monitoring expertise
Experience with vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus)
Experience building AI agents or multi-step reasoning systems
Startup or high-growth environment experience
or
All done!
Your application has been successfully submitted!

Our Process.
Introductory chat In the first call, we want to learn about you, your story, and of course, to check a potential fit to Carv. This is also a chance for you to ask questions about the role and company.
Show us your skills For all technical roles, we will ask you to finish a technical challenge to check your knowledge and expertise. Don't worry, nothing crazy, just a fun challenge.
Technical chat In this meeting, the Carv team will dive deeper into your experience and what you could bring to the team. You can expect questions to check how knowledgeable you are in your field of expertise.
Final chat You made it to the very last stage, the final chat! Here we want to introduce more team members, share our mission & vision, and also give you the opportunity to ask your final questions.
Perks & Benefits.

Work on something unique

Competitive salary

Personal development budget

Company stock options

Latest MacBook Pro

Unlimited PTO

