Senior Technical Lead, EO Platforms & GeoAI

VITO Research; Mol; Hybride; EUR 90 000 - 130 000; Plein temps

Avantages offerts par ce poste

Flexibility: onsite in Mol with remote

Training opportunities and knowledge分享

Work‑life balance emphasis

Résumé du poste

VITO Research, based in Mol, Belgium, seeks a hands-on Technical Lead to shape Earth Observation platforms, drive architectural direction, and guide teams in data access, processing and AI-enabled services.

You will lead complex technical work in a fast-moving GeoAI field, collaborating with international partners and guiding sovereign deployments while advancing openEO, Terrascope and Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem developments.

Qualifications

• Strong technical background in software engineering, computer science, data engineering, Earth Observation, geomatics or a related field.
• Experience as a technical lead, software architect or senior engineer in cloud-native platforms, distributed processing systems or data-intensive applications.
• Solid programming experience, preferably in Python and/or Scala, and the ability to guide technical choices across a broader software stack.
• Familiarity with cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, containerisation, object storage, CI/CD, observability tooling or distributed processing frameworks.
• Interest in Earth Observation platforms and open standards such as openEO, STAC, OGC APIs, Jupyter-based environments, Terrascope or the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem.
• Continuous curiosity for GeoAI, including embeddings, vector search, semantic search, foundation models, AI agents or LLM integration.
• An interest in secure, sovereign or restricted deployment environments; prior experience in this area is a plus.
• A collaborative leadership style: you enjoy guiding colleagues, sharing knowledge and making complex technical choices understandable.
• Fluency in English; Dutch and/or French are an asset.

Responsabilités

• Shape the architecture of Earth Observation platforms that support large-scale data access, processing, catalogues, APIs, user environments and operational services.
• Take a leading technical role from proposal writing to execution in innovation projects for ESA, the European Commission, and other institutional customers.
• Explore and integrate new GeoAI capabilities, such as embeddings, semantic search, AI agents, LLM-enabled interfaces and foundation-model approaches.
• Help evolve openEO, Terrascope and Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem services towards AI-ready, federated and sovereign deployment models.
• Work closely with software engineers, operations teams, EO experts, product owners and project managers to bring ideas into production.
• Support engineering quality through good architecture, automated testing, continuous integration, documentation, observability and reusable components.
• Contribute to technical roadmaps, project proposals and stakeholder discussions with a clear and practical technical vision.

Connaissances

Tech leadership

Software architecture

Python/Scala

Cloud-native tech

GeoAI

Leadership & guidance

English fluency

Formation

Strong technical background in software engineering/Earth Observation/geomatics

Outils

Kubernetes

Containerisation

CI/CD

Description du poste

VITO Research, based in Mol, Belgium, seeks a hands-on Technical Lead to shape Earth Observation platforms, drive architectural direction, and guide teams in data access, processing and AI-enabled services.

You will lead complex technical work in a fast-moving GeoAI field, collaborating with international partners and guiding sovereign deployments while advancing openEO, Terrascope and Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem developments.