Purpose of the Position
We're looking for a Senior AI Engineer to help us build the next generation of AI-native products at Awin. The features you'll work on are used directly by advertisers, publishers and partner managers across our global ecosystem to grow and run their affiliate programs things like conversational AI experiences, intelligent automation and decision-support tools built on top of Large Language Models and agent-based architectures.
This is a senior product engineering role where you will own real problems end-to-end, make architecture decisions the team builds on and balance technical depth with the realities of shipping software to customers. We expect you to have an opinion on the system design, the evaluation strategy and the way we operate AI in production.
The Team
You will be joining the AI Solutions team in our Growth Domain. This team is responsible for building AI-native products. Our work is highly visible and every feature you ship can have a real impact on how our customers manage and grow their affiliate programs.
Our engineering culture is built on pragmatic problem solving, strong ownership, fast iteration and a high production bar set through rigorous evaluation, observability and safe-by-default design. We're cloud-first on AWS, working with a Python-based stack that combines agent orchestration, retrieval and standard backend foundations, refreshed as the field moves.
The team practices scrum and you'll have the opportunity to bring new ideas whether that's a different way to solve a problem, an improvement to how we work or sharing best practices for a new technology within the team.
Along with access to learning platforms, hackathons and cross-team initiatives, you will have plenty of opportunities to learn and gain experience from people across the many other teams within Awin.
What You'll Do
- Design, build and operate customer-facing AI features end-to-end, from conversational experiences to intelligent automation.
- Architect agent-based systems: multi-step reasoning, tool execution, sub-agent orchestration, state management and streaming, structured outputs, persistent memory and human-in-the-loop approval flows.
- Decide how the system grounds, retrieves and constructs context.
- Pick the right pattern (retrieval, structured tools, agentic flows) for each problem and be able to defend the choice.
- Treat prompt and context engineering as first-class engineering work.
- Own AI quality. Build evaluation datasets, regression tests for prompts and agents and the debugging discipline needed to get to root cause across model outputs, retrieval and tool calls.
- Make AI production-ready: observability, tracing, reliability, cost, latency and the safety controls that protect against hallucination, prompt injection and context leakage.
- Make and explain the trade-offs between accuracy, latency, cost and safety within engineering and product partners. Partner within Product Trio to shape what we build, not just how we build it.
- Turn ambiguous product ideas into concrete technical designs and influence roadmap with what the technology actually makes possible.
- Mentor engineers around you, contribute to design reviews and our hiring bar and raise the standard for what production-ready AI means inside the team.
What You'll Bring
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping production systems.
- Strong Python and backend system design.
- Real, hands-on experience building and running production LLM-based systems not just prototypes.
- Deep experience with agent-based architectures using frameworks such as LangGraph, the Deep Agents or equivalents with multi-step reasoning, tool use, sub-agent orchestration, state and streaming.
- Strong working knowledge of retrieval and context construction (RAG, embeddings, chunking, ranking) and good judgement about when to use those patterns inside an agentic system.
- A solid track record of evaluating and debugging AI systems: structured evals, regression tests and tracing or observability with tools such as LangSmith or similar.
- Familiarity with emerging agent orchestration standards (MCP or similar). Experience with vector databases and hybrid retrieval.
- A clear understanding of LLM failure modes like prompt injection, content safety, context leakage and how to mitigate them in real systems.
- Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, API design and cloud-native architectures on AWS (ECS, Lambda, S3, API Gateway).
- Confident with PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker and modern CI/CD pipelines like GitHub Actions.
- A collaborative engineer who's comfortable working in a Scrum team alongside Product, UX and cross functional teams.
Nice to Have
- Experimentation frameworks (A/B testing, offline-to-online metric correlation).
- Cost-aware AI engineering at production scale in monitoring token usage, model selection, caching and routing strategies that keep latency and spend predictable as traffic grows.
Our Offer
Flexi-Week: We prioritise your mental health and wellbeing by offering you a four-day Flexi-Week (with one lighter or completely disconnected day per week) at full pay, with no reduction to your annual holiday allowance.
Flexi-office: We offer an international culture and flexibility through our hybrid/remote working scheme which is designed to foster a culture of mutual trust and working flexibility.
Work Expense Contribution & Remote Working Furniture: You will receive a monthly allowance to cover part of your running costs, as well as a furniture package to support you in setting up a comfortable workspace when working from home.
Health and Wellbeing: With our support and access to various initiatives and sports offers, you can focus on your mental and physical wellbeing.
Development: We've built our extensive training suite, Awin Academy, to cover a wide range of skills that support your professional and personal growth, with trainings conveniently packaged to help your overall development.
Appreciation: Thank and reward colleagues by sending them a voucher through our peer-to-peer recognition programme.
We are hiring in multiple countries for this role. Additional benefits, including health and wellbeing offerings, will be discussed during the initial interview.
Established in 2000, Awin is proud of our dynamic, social and inclusive culture.
Like all businesses, we've had to adapt and nurture our culture in a virtual environment. Our virtual 'Life @ Awin' hub brings our colleagues from across the globe together for various social activities.
Diversity & Inclusion are paramount to us, and we proudly pursue and hire diverse team members. We champion uniqueness and authenticity; this is who we are at our core. Our network of affiliate partnerships are diverse and transparent, as are the employees powering our vision to build the world's leading open partner ecosystem. We welcome all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. If you need support at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.
Awin is part of the Axel Springer group. Learn more at axelspringer.com/en/, and explore the Axel Springer Essentials here: axelspringer.com/en/inside/the-essentials-what-we-have-adapted-and-why
Apply now to begin the next stage of your career at a progressive company that supports both your professional and personal development.
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