Principal AI/ML Scientist & Engineer

We believe it takes great people to create a great product. Since 2010, Pipedrive has been on a mission to support sales and marketing teams with easy‑to‑use, powerful tools that make everyday work faster and easier. Today, our cloud‑based software is trusted by over 100,000 companies in 179 countries. We have grown from a five‑person team to a truly international company of over 850 people, representing more than 50 nationalities, with ten offices across Europe and the US.

We are looking for a Principal AI/ML Scientist & Engineer to lead a growing team of Applied Scientists and AI/ML Engineers. This role is for a pragmatic “Builder‑Scientist”—a technical leader who possesses deep scientific rigor but is fundamentally driven by the iterative shipping of data products that customers fall in love with. You will lead the technical strategy for AI/ML‑based solutions designed to extract value from both structured and unstructured data, bridging the gap between advanced research and production‑grade systems. Your impact will be measured through technical leadership, leverage, and the real‑world business outcomes you enable.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of Applied Scientists and AI/ML Engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and scientific rigor.
• Lead the technical strategy for AI/ML‑based solutions focused on extracting actionable value and insights from both structured CRM data and unstructured content.
• Build the intelligence within our AI‑native CRM, including the design of autonomous agentic workflows and real‑time reasoning engines that execute business actions safely at scale.
• Partner closely with the AI Platform team to drive the overarching strategy for large language model operations (LLMOps), ensuring infrastructure supports efficient experimentation and robust deployment.
• Apply deep scientific intuition to the design of AI systems, ensuring that models and data‑intensive solutions are optimized for customer centricity and real‑world performance.
• Act as a technical authority and multiplier across the AI/ML and data ecosystem, shaping the AI engineering roadmap and setting the bar for how we leverage the modern AI stack.
• Lead as a high‑impact individual contributor on our most critical systems, balancing a deep love for building with the ability to delegate effectively and grow the team’s technical capabilities.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of applied science or engineering experience with a broad, practical understanding of the full ML and AI lifecycle in high‑scale production environments.
• Proven ability to lead and scale a technical team, with experience mentoring senior talent and raising the technical bar of an organization.
• Deep expertise in modern AI engineering concepts and tech stacks, with hands‑on experience in agentic system orchestration (e.g., LangGraph), RAG architectures, and vector databases.
• Deep scientist training combined with a builder mindset; prioritise shipping working, iterative solutions that solve real customer problems over theoretical perfection.
• Proven track record of delivering customer and business value through simple and complex AI/ML‑based solutions at scale.
• Broad exposure to ML, Deep Learning, and AI; understand the practical trade‑offs between different models and agentic frameworks.
• Excellent product sense and business awareness, with the ability to translate technical and scientific choices into tangible improvements for our users.
• Ability to lead through influence and technical authority, partnering with platform teams to influence strategy and raise the collective technical bar.
• Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP), distributed systems, container orchestration, data engineering (batch pipeline, feature store, Kafka).

Benefits

• People‑first culture – authenticity, collaboration, and support with no egos, just teamwork across a global, inclusive space.
• Opportunity to push boundaries, take ownership, and experiment with the latest technologies as we enhance our AI First Vision.
• Flexible hours, wellness perks, performance‑based bonuses, 28 paid leave days, well‑being days, compassionate leave, and parental leave – we take care of our people.
• Mentorship, coaching, and internal mobility to unlock potential, with open, honest feedback and clear communication at our core.
• Meaningful, customer‑driven work that helps 100,000+ small and medium‑size businesses grow and succeed.

Pipedrive is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage diversity in the workplace regardless of age, gender, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or veteran status.