Lead AI Engineer

Vtt-Technical-Research-Centre-of-Finlan; Espoo; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Occupational health care

Exercise and culture benefits

Hobby clubs

Six weeks paid holiday

Job summary

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Espoo invites you to join our Research Digital Enablers team as Lead AI Engineer. You will lead the development of our AI platform and empower researchers to deploy and reuse AI solutions at scale.

You will collaborate with researchers, data specialists and architects to design scalable capabilities across cloud, on‑prem and GPU environments, while mentoring engineers and shaping the platform roadmap.

Qualifications

• As a strong hands-on leader, you bring expertise in AI platform engineering and software architecture.
• You have experience with production-grade platforms and researchers or developer experiences.
• You understand modern model serving, inference and MLOps workflows.
• You communicate fluently in English with researchers, engineers and leadership teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical vision, architecture, roadmap and lifecycle of VTT's shared AI platform.
• Lead design and implementation of scalable AI development, deployment and inference across cloud, on-prem and GPU environments.
• Provide governed access to models via gateways, APIs and platform services.
• Establish practices for experimentation, deployment, monitoring, security and governance.
• Collaborate with researchers to translate scientific use cases into reusable platform capabilities.
• Mentor engineers and researchers and strengthen VTT's internal AI engineering community.

Skills

AI platform

Machine learning

Cloud-native

Software architecture

Kubernetes

Containers

GPU workloads

CI/CD

GitOps

IaC

Python

API development

MLOps

LLMOps

Tools

LiteLLM

Job description

Are you interested in building modern AI platforms and looking for a new opportunity in the field? Would you like to develop innovative technology with superb colleagues who are top experts in their fields and work at the interface of research and industry? VTT might be just the place for you.

VTT is one of the leading applied research organisations in Europe. What unites us are curiosity, a passion for learning, and a purpose: to solve the biggest challenges of our time and turn them into sustainable growth and well-being. Our cross-disciplinary community of over 2000 brilliant minds from 55+ different nationalities focuses on creating impact through science-based innovation. Get to know us further by exploring VTT's tech & infra.

Join us as Lead AI Engineer

We are looking for a Lead AI Engineer to join our Research Digital Enablers team. You will lead the development of our AI platform and engineering capabilities. In this role, you will work at the intersection of AI, platform engineering, and research. Your mission is to create technical foundations that allow researchers to develop, deploy, and utilise advanced AI solutions as part of their daily work.

You will collaborate closely with researchers, data specialists, platform engineers, and architects to understand evolving needs and transform them into scalable platform capabilities. From AI model deployment and inference services to agentic AI, model governance, and self-service AI environments, you will play a key role in enabling the next generation of research and innovation.

Your responsibilities as Lead AI Engineer:

• Own the technical vision, architecture, roadmap and lifecycle of VTT's shared AI platform.
• Lead the hands-on design and implementation of scalable capabilities for AI development, model deployment and inference across cloud, on-premises and GPU environments.
• Provide governed access to commercial, open-source and private models through AI gateways, shared APIs and reusable platform services.
• Establish platform capabilities and engineering practices for experimentation, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, observability, security and lifecycle management.
• Work continuously with researchers and research leaders to understand scientific workflows and translate diverse use cases into prioritised, reusable platform capabilities.
• Facilitate technical discovery, co-design and onboarding, and help research teams select suitable models, tools and deployment patterns.
• Integrate the AI platform with data platforms, identity and access management, research infrastructures, cloud services and internal developer platforms.
• Define service levels, capacity needs, operational ownership and platform metrics, and use stakeholder feedback and usage data to drive continuous improvement.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and lead proofs of concept and transitions from experimentation to supported services.
• Mentor engineers and researchers and strengthen VTT's internal AI engineering community.

Who we are looking for:

• You have strong hands-on experience in AI platform engineering, machine learning, cloud-native platform engineering, or software architecture.
• You have built or operated production-grade platforms and understand platform ownership, service lifecycle management and researcher or developer experience.
• You have strong experience with Kubernetes, containers, GPU workloads, cloud or on-premises infrastructure, CI/CD, GitOps and Infrastructure as Code.
• You understand modern model serving and inference.
• You are familiar with AI gateways such as LiteLLM.
• You understand MLOps and LLMOps methods and tools for experiment tracking, model registries, pipelines, evaluation, observability, tracing and governance.
• You have practical knowledge of large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector search, AI agents, model adaptation and evaluation, together with strong Python and API development skills.
• You can turn varied research requirements into a coherent platform roadmap, explain technical trade-offs and collaborate fluently in English with researchers, engineers, architects, security specialists and leadership stakeholders.

As a person, we hope that you are:

A curious and pragmatic technical leader who combines long-term platform thinking with hands-on engineering. You listen carefully to researchers, ask the right questions and identify the shared capability behind different scientific use cases. You take ownership, communicate technical choices clearly and enjoy aligning multidisciplinary stakeholders around solutions that are secure, usable and maintainable.

With VTT, you’ll enjoy

• Visionary work in technology. You will shape a strategic AI platform that enables VTT's researchers to move from experimentation to scalable use and create real, positive impact through science and innovation.
• Fascinating projects and an excellent research environment. You will collaborate with experts across scientific domains, learn from demanding research use cases and turn common needs into reusable capabilities.
• Great career opportunities and superb colleagues. You will have the opportunity to influence architecture, tools and ways of working and to grow an internal community around modern AI engineering.
• Support for your well-being. We nurture strong team spirit and leadership and offer versatile services that support work-life balance, including occupational health care, exercise and culture benefits, hobby clubs and six weeks of paid holiday annually after one year of employment.

Interested and want to hear more? For further information, please contact Samuli Immonen, [e-mail], [phone] on 5.11. 9-10 or 11.11. 15-16.

We look forward to hearing from you!