Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Applied AI

Media Distillery International; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 72,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited vacation days

Flexible working hours

Home office stipend

Annual training budget

Office in Amsterdam center

Job summary

Media Distillery International in Amsterdam is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer focused on Applied AI to build AI-powered products that use LLMs and VLMs for video understanding. You will own features from prototype to production in a small, international team.

The role blends state-of-the-art AI with product impact: you train, fine-tune, or distill models when off-the-shelf options aren’t sufficient, and you ship reliable backend services and APIs with attention to latency and cost.

Qualifications

• At least 5 years of applied AI/ML experience, including generative AI.
• Strong Python skills with PyTorch or similar frameworks.
• Experience applying LLMs or VLMs in real-world products.
• Solid backend skills to build a service or API.
• Proficient in English, written and spoken.
• Ability to design experiments and production‑grade features.

Responsibilities

• Work with product and engineering to understand needs and build AI-powered products.
• Own features end to end, from approach to delivery.
• Design and run experiments, evaluations, and benchmarks.
• Train, fine-tune, and distill LLMs and VLMs for video understanding.
• Manage the full model lifecycle from prototype to production.
• Contribute to the team through code/design reviews and mentoring.

Skills

Applied AI & ML

Python

LLMs/VLMs

Backend services

English proficiency

Curiosity & Proactiveness

Production experience

Problem solving

Tools

PyTorch

AWS SageMaker

Java

Job description

Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Applied AI

At a glance

Location: Amsterdam, hybrid with 2 days a week in the office

Hours: 36-40 hours per week, part-time possible

Salary: EUR 72.000 to EUR 80.000 gross per year including holiday allowance, based on full time

Level: Senior

Focus: building products with LLMs and VLMs

Tech: Python, PyTorch, AWS (SageMaker), and Java (a big plus)

About Media Distillery

We are an Amsterdam-based B2B software company that uses AI to understand what is inside video. TV operators, broadcasters, and streaming platforms use our solutions to give viewers faster access to relevant content, boost advertising, and increase engagement, with features such as skip intro, previews, sports highlights (for example, summaries of all World Cup football matches), chapters, and vertical video. Our products run in production for video services across the globe. See our solutions overview for the full range of products.

We are a young, energetic, international company for people who thrive in a startup or scaleup environment. Small agile teams are responsible for the development and life of a full product, with a lot of freedom and responsibility: you build it, you run it.

The role

You will work at the intersection of state-of-the-art AI and product. The core of the role is building AI-powered products that solve real needs of our customers, using the latest AI tools and models such as LLMs and VLMs. You care as much about why a feature matters to the customer as about how it works. When off‑the‑shelf models are not good enough, you train, fine‑tune, or distill your own, so they are accurate, fast, and affordable on live video.

You have full ownership from the first experiment to production. The role is closer to a generalist than a specialist, and more applied than research: when a product needs a backend service, an API, or a data pipeline, you build it, using agentic coding tools to move fast.

What you'll do

• Work with product, engineering, and sometimes sales or customers to understand customer needs and build AI-powered products with your team
• Own features or initiatives end to end, from shaping the approach to delivering the result
• Design and run experiments, evaluations, and benchmarks that show whether a model is good enough to ship
• Train, fine-tune, and distill LLMs and VLMs for video understanding when off-the-shelf models are not enough
• Manage the full model lifecycle, from prototype to production, with attention to latency, cost, and reliability
• Contribute to a strong team through code and design reviews, knowledge sharing, and mentoring, and help shape our ML approach

Who you are

• At least 5 years of experience in applied AI and machine learning, including generative AI (max 4 years, we know ;) )
• A good understanding of traditional ML, such as encodings, embeddings, and classification models
• Strong Python skills and experience with PyTorch or similar frameworks
• Experience applying LLMs or VLMs in real-world products, from prompting and evaluation to fine-tuning and distillation
• Solid backend skills: you can build and ship a service or API yourself using agentic coding tools
• A solution-oriented mindset and a track record in production: you build the most pragmatic solution with the models available, and you maintain what customers use after launch
• Strong problem-solving skills, comfort with messy real-world data, and rigorous model evaluation
• Curious and proactive: you like to understand how new models and tools work, try them on real problems, and find ways to make challenging things possible
• Proficient in English, written and spoken

Nice to have

• Java experience for backend work, which is a big plus: our core services are written in Java, while many of our ML services are in Python
• Experience with video, audio, and multimodal models, including formats and processing
• Experience deploying models in production at large scale: AWS (including Amazon SageMaker), Docker and Kubernetes, CI/CD for machine learning, and GPU inference
• Affinity with media, sports, and technology

What we offer

• Work on products used by millions of viewers on video services across the world
• A small, senior team where your ideas shape the roadmap, with room to learn and grow
• An annual training budget for your skills or for events, and a monthly hackathon during office hours
• Fun company events and an annual multi-day company trip
• Unlimited vacation days
• Flexible working hours, with the possibility to work from home 3 days a week, plus everything you need for your home office and compensation for your phone, internet, and working from home
• Travel expenses and streaming subscriptions (up to EUR 300 per year) reimbursed
• An office in the center of Amsterdam, with great coffee, free (healthy) snacks, and standing desks
• Salary between EUR 72.000 and 80.000 gross per year including holiday allowance (based on full time, 36-40 hours), depending on skills and experience