AI Tech Director

Emerce; Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 78,000 - 113,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary up to €10,100/month

25 vacation days

NS-Business Card

Bike lease

Laptop and tools

Daily lunch

Team coaching and mentoring

Offices in Amsterdam/Rotterdam

Job summary

Curamando, part of Eidra, is hiring an AI Tech Director in Amsterdam to lead the AI practice. You will act as the senior technical voice, shaping GenAI strategies, and steering engineering teams alongside strategy consultants, marketers, and designers to deliver high-impact AI solutions.

You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, influence pitches and proposals, and ensure technical excellence while balancing business considerations.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience, with hands-on AI experience.
• Track record of building not just advising on AI solutions.
• Entrepreneurial mindset and self-starter attitude.

Responsibilities

• Lead boardroom conversations on technology and AI with senior stakeholders.
• Set the technical vision and architecture standards across AI engagements.
• Mentor GenAI engineering teams and guide architectural choices.
• Support pitches and proposals as the technical counterpart in scoping and budgeting.
• Spot emerging AI capabilities and translate into strategic advice for clients.
• Validate feasibility and risks of AI use cases including data security and privacy.
• Direct the journey to production, ensuring delivery quality.

Skills

LLMs

Vector databases

Embeddings

Prompt engineering

Model evaluation

OpenAI

Python

TypeScript

Cloud deployment

CI/CD

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Azure

GCP

AWS

Job description

Lead a team at the cutting edge of AI, building real solutions for some of the world's most ambitious brands.

About Curamando

Curamando is a leading digital growth consultancy, combining deep expertise in strategy, technology, and marketing to help ambitious companies accelerate their digital and AI transformation.

Curamando is part of consulting collective Eidra, comprising 1500 experts of which 250 are located in the Netherlands. The collective includes best-in-breed companies like Q42, Fabrique, Kurppa Hosk, Essense, and Curamando and spans expertises such as Consulting, Creativity, Engineering, AI and Data. Our clients include NVIDIA, HEMA, Netflix, Rijksmuseum, Minecraft, Meta, Spotify, Polestar, Nike, Zalando, among many others.

At Curamando Netherlands, we build cutting-edge AI solutions where strategic rigor meets engineering ingenuity, and we make things real fast. From GenAI workflows and custom agents to production-ready applications with real business impact.

You will be part of a global team of more than 30 AI engineers, with nearly half based in the Netherlands. If you want to lead impactful and innovative AI solutions alongside strategy consultants, marketeers, data experts and designers, this is the place.

Your role as AI Tech Director

As AI Tech Director at Curamando, you are the most senior technical voice in our AI practice. You get to work on the most ambitious and high-impact AI projects our clients bring us: the ones where the technology is new, the stakes are high, and there is no playbook to copy from.

You operate as an equal to a client's CTO, leading the boardroom conversation on technology & AI and translating where the industry is heading into concrete implications for our clients. You set the technical direction for our GenAI teams, steering engineers toward high quality, responsible and impactful solutions, and you work side by side with colleagues across strategy, design and marketing to get it built.

You make sure that what we promise is technically sound and that what we build delivers on that promise. You are also involved on the commercial side as the technical counterpart: providing input for pitches and joining them, shaping proposals, and contributing to scoping and budgeting. Although you are involved commercially, this is not a deal-hunting role. We do not expect you to proactively chase new business.

What will you do?

• Lead boardroom conversations on technology and AI with senior client stakeholders, serving as the credible counterpart to their CTO.
• Set and own the technical vision and architecture standards across our AI engagements, balancing transformative potential against practical limitations and risk.
• Steer and mentor our GenAI engineering teams, guiding architectural choices, raising the quality bar and resolving the hardest technical bottlenecks.
• Support commercial work as the technical counterpart: providing input for pitches, joining pitches, and contributing to proposals, scoping and budgeting.
• Spot emerging AI capabilities and shifts in the market, and translate them into concrete strategic advice for clients and into our own positioning.
• Validate feasibility and risks of AI use cases, including data security, privacy, licensing and responsible AI considerations.
• Direct and oversee the journey to production: keeping teams focused on the critical priorities, resolving bottlenecks, anticipating challenges and safeguarding delivery quality.

What do you bring?

• At least 10 years of engineering experience, of which a minimum of 3 years working hands-on with AI.
• A proven track record of building, not just advising. Maybe you founded a startup, launched a new proposition, or brought a product to market.
• An entrepreneurial mindset and a self-starting attitude: you take ownership, move fast, and turn ideas into something tangible.
• The presence and credibility to lead technical and AI conversations at boardroom level.
• A proven track record of architecting and overseeing the delivery of complex, scalable AI solutions.
• Hands-on experience of LLMs, vector databases, embeddings, prompt engineering, retrieval setups, fine-tuning and model evaluation methods.
• Experience integrating AI services (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Meta and Fal.ai).
• Strong software engineering skills in TypeScript and/or Python, with experience building real backend systems and data pipelines.
• Proven experience deploying scalable applications in Azure, GCP or AWS, and running them reliably in production.
• Experience with Docker, CI/CD and modern DevOps practices, and the ability to move a solution from “it works on my laptop” to “it runs reliably in the cloud”.
• A pragmatic mindset, and the ability to judge when AI is the right tool and when it is not.
• The ability to turn vague client questions into concrete technical solutions.
• Strong commercial instincts: comfort contributing to pitches, proposals, scoping and budgeting as the technical authority, without needing to hunt deals yourself.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams.
• Curiosity, creativity and enthusiasm for exploring new AI capabilities and patterns.

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience with machine learning, computer vision, generative images or multimodal models.
• Experience in consultancy or client-facing environments.

What do we offer?

• We offer a salary up to € 10.100 per month, depending on your experience and profile. This includes a maximum pension plan, holiday allowance and internet allowance.
• 25 vacation days, NS-Business Card, bike lease, a laptop and all the tools you need to do your job well.
• A flexible workspace in our office in the center of Amsterdam or Rotterdam. We appreciate it if you are regularly present at the office, but it is also possible to work from home on a regular basis.
• A delicious daily lunch, chair massages, Friday drinks and company outings.
• An entrepreneurial and inspiring environment with plenty of room for your own ideas, initiative and experimentation.
• Significant opportunities for personal and professional development, with coaching and mentoring as core elements, supported by training and courses across the Eidra group.
• The chance to work for global clients and collaborate with colleagues across our offices in the Nordics, US and Germany, including an onboarding week in Stockholm to kickstart your journey.

Please note: we don't hire applicants living outside the European Union.