Staff AI Engineer (m/f/d)

Join our AI Engineering Team in full-time (40 hrs./week) as Staff AI Engineer (m/f/d). This position is available as a full-time role at our IU office locations or remotely (must reside in Germany or the UK).

In this role, you will take ownership of high-impact AI initiatives, working closely with senior leadership to design and deploy scalable AI solutions for the largest European EdTech player.

Your tasks:

• Drive AI innovation by leading and implementing AI automation initiatives, including customer service case routing and internal workflow optimization using LLMs (GPT-4, Claude, Mistral), LangChain, AutoGen, and CrewAI.
• Solve high-impact problems independently, developing AI-native applications and deploying LLM-based architectures with FastAPI, Python, and cloud-based deployments (AWS/GCP/Azure) to significantly reduce engineering time and effort.
• Lead AI-powered automation efforts, integrating LLMs with external APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face), databases (PostgreSQL, Pinecone, Weaviate, ChromaDB), and business logic to improve operational efficiency.
• Develop scalable and cost-efficient AI systems, optimizing LLM inference pipelines with vLLM, DeepSpeed, LoRA, and FSDP, and implementing best practices for AI observability, safety, and monitoring (Guardrails AI, Prometheus, Grafana, LangSmith).
• Foster collaboration and AI adoption, working closely with the CTO, senior engineers, data scientists, and process managers to ensure AI solutions align with business objectives and integrate seamlessly into MLOps pipelines (Kubernetes, Ray Serve, BentoML, CI/CD workflows).

Your Profile:

• Proven ability to lead and take ownership of AI initiatives, solving ambiguous and complex engineering challenges with a solution-oriented mindset and strong problem-solving abilities.
• Deep curiosity and adaptability, always seeking new LLM advancements and finding creative ways to apply them in a fast-paced, evolving AI ecosystem using cutting-edge frameworks like Hugging Face, OpenAI API, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques.
• Strong problem-solving mindset, comfortable working autonomously on high-stakes AI engineering projects, pushing boundaries in AI automation, generative AI applications, and multi-agent system architectures.
• Experience with AI development and integration, including prompt engineering, fine-tuning LLMs, vector search (FAISS, Pinecone), knowledge retrieval, and multi-agent collaboration using AutoGen and CrewAI.
• Collaborative and business-driven approach, able to translate AI potential into real-world impact by engaging with senior leadership and cross-functional teams to develop scalable, AI-powered automation solutions.

We offer:

• Be you at IU: We support and empower you to achieve your personal and professional goals. Your happiness significantly contributes to a positive and productive environment.
• Work wherever you want: Digitalization is part of our DNA. Decide for yourself which place sparks the most productivity in you. Remote work is an option!
• Flexible in terms of time: It’s your job; we trust you and give you the greatest possible freedom to organise yourself.
• Take your knowledge to a new level: Enjoy free access to all our e-learning platforms and we will finance you a complete technology course of your choice.
• Make your journey sustainable: Enjoy the freedom of mobility for both work and personal activities, while also making an eco-friendly choice.
• 33 days to rest: In addition to 30 flexible vacation days per year, we also give you an extra day off on your birthday, as well as days off on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

IU International University of Applied Science (IU) is Germany's largest university of applied science. As an Edutech company, we rely on state-of-the-art technology and data-driven approaches. Here at IU, over 4,000 employees are dedicated to making a difference.

Become part of Data Science > AI team! We develop solutions to further increase our efficiency and productivity through automation, a higher clock rate, and better monitoring of our processes.

Sounds like the perfect job for you? Then apply now! Simple, fast and even without a cover letter. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact Anita at Anita.Streitferdt(at)iu.org.

We cherish our 'Culture of Everyone' and do not tolerate discrimination towards any race, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation or disability. We welcome you as you are and look forward to nurturing our diverse community at the IU!