Senior Software Engineer – AI Applications | Java, AI Workflows, LLMs, Distributed Systems
Up to €130 per hour (based on a 40-hour working week)
Amsterdam – Hybrid, minimum 1 day per week on site
Contract until the end of 2026, with the possibility of extension
About the Client
Digital Skills are working with a global technology business undertaking long-term investment in AI-powered digital products.
About the Role
This is a senior, hands-on engineering role within an AI Applications platform team, focused on building scalable AI-powered workflows and services. The successful candidate will operate as a technical leader, working closely with machine learning engineers and data scientists to bring AI and LLM-driven solutions into production at scale.
Responsibilities
- Design and implement AI application workflows, including LLM-based pipelines and orchestration
- Build scalable backend systems that support real-time AI inference in production environments
- Collaborate closely with ML engineers, data scientists and data engineers to productionise AI solutions
- Lead by example as a senior individual contributor, coaching and guiding less experienced engineers
- Explore, evaluate and integrate new AI and ML tooling to support evolving product needs
Desired Skills and Experience
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong backend or platform focus
- Proven experience building and scaling complex production systems, not limited to side projects
- Deep expertise in AI and machine learning systems, particularly AI applications and agents
- Hands-on experience with LLMs, AI workflows, orchestration and context engineering
- Experience building AI agents and components such as memory, retrieval and workflow coordination
- Strong Java experience, with Python also acceptable
- Experience integrating AI or ML models into production systems and understanding their constraints
- Solid background in distributed systems, performance tuning, observability and reliability practices
- Experience with scalable data stores such as MySQL and Redis, including caching strategies
- Practical experience with Docker and Kubernetes
- Cloud experience with AWS or GCP, with container orchestration considered more important than cloud vendor
- Experience mentoring and coaching engineers in a senior or technical leadership capacity
Summary of the Best Candidate
This role suits a highly experienced Senior Software Engineer who remains deeply hands-on and has a strong background in building and scaling complex systems. The ideal candidate will combine deep software engineering fundamentals with proven AI and LLM experience, and will be comfortable acting as a technical lead within a collaborative, cross-functional AI product team.
