Senior AI/ML Engineer, France

As a Senior AI/ML Engineer at vector8, you will design, implement, and deploy AI solutions that bridge the gap between research and production. Your work will focus on integrating and fine-tuning AI Models, optimizing the model performance, and ensuring enterprise-grade reliability, security, and scalability.
This is a hands-on engineering role where you will:

• Develop and optimize LLM and VLM-powered solutions for enterprise use cases
• Develop and optimize TTS, STT and ML models
• Apply software engineering best practices (testing, CI/CD, modular design, documentation)
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (data engineers, MLOps, cloud architects, and business stakeholders)
• Solve real-world enterprise challenges (security, compliance, legacy system integration)
• Own the full lifecycle of AI models, from data exploration to production monitoring

You will work closely with vector8’s Engineers and Project Managers to co-design AI foundations that enable organizations to scale AI from individual use cases to enterprise-wide capabilities.
The role is primarily based in Paris, with occasional travel to client sites and collaboration with teams across Europe.

Responsibilities

1. End-to-End Model Development

• Design, implement, and deploy distributed, high-volume, high-performance, low-latency machine learning solutions, with a focus on GenAI models, and especially LLM integrations and API-driven architectures
• Take ownership of your models throughout their entire lifecycle:
• Data exploration and cleaning to build reproducible, versioned datasets
• State-of-the-art research to identify the best architectures for the problem (e.g., transformers, RAG, fine-tuning)
• Implementation, training, and optimization in reproducible environments
• Deployment, monitoring, and maintenance in production
• Optimize models for performance, latency, and cost efficiency, especially in LLM serving and inference

2. Software Engineering for AI

• Write clean, modular, and well-documented code in Python (FastAPI, Pydantic, asyncio)
• Apply best practices in:
  • Testing (unit, integration, end-to-end)
  • CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD)
  • Observability (logging, monitoring, tracing)
• Ensure security and compliance (data protection, access controls, encryption)
• Integrate models and code into CI/CD pipelines for seamless deployment

3. AI & ML Integration & API Development

• Design and implement AI-powered solutions that integrate with APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures
• Develop and optimize AI pipelines for:
  • Dataset cleaning, preprocessing and model training
  • Fine-tuning (domain adaptation, instruction tuning)
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) (vector databases, semantic search)
  • Prompt engineering (optimizing inputs for performance, cost, and accuracy)
• Model evaluation (benchmarking, bias detection, drift analysis)
• Build scalable, secure, and cost-efficient serving infrastructure (e.g., FastAPI, vLLM)
• Debug and optimize performance (latency, throughput, token efficiency for Transformer based architectures)

4. Enterprise AI & MLOps

• Deploy and monitor AI models in production
• Design and implement MLOps pipelines for:
  • Model training, fine-tuning, and evaluation
  • Model versioning and lineage tracking
  • A/B testing and canary deployments
• Ensure scalability and reliability (auto-scaling, fault tolerance, disaster recovery)
• Collaborate with data engineers to build data pipelines (batch, streaming, real-time)

5. Collaboration & Technical Leadership

• Work closely with product owners, DevOps, and quality assurance in an agile, cross-functional team
• Mentor junior engineers and promote best practices in AI/ML and software engineering
• Translate product requirements into technical solutions and architectural decisions
• Document architectures, decisions, and best practices for internal and client-facing use
• Develop relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including clients and partners

6. Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Stay ahead of the latest AI and ML architectures (transformers, Mixture of Experts, sparse attention).
• Experiment with cutting-edge techniques (quantization, distillation, speculative decoding).
• Evaluate and benchmark open-source and proprietary models (Llama, Mistral, Mixtral, GPT-4, Claude).
• Bring your own ideas through vector8’s ideation process.
• Contribute to vector8’s AI accelerators (reusable components for common industry problems).
• Embrace a strategic and continuous improvement mentality to drive innovation.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, software development, or a related field
• Expertisein LLM architectures and training methodologies:
  • Transformers, attention mechanisms, fine-tuning, RAG, quantization
  • Prompt engineering, model evaluation, bias detection
• Strong knowledge of machine learning architectures: fully connected, CNN, LSTM, transformers and classical ML models
• Strong software engineering skills:
  • Proficient in Python (FastAPI, Pydantic, asyncio, type hints)
  • Experience with API development
  • Familiarity with modern toolchains (Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform)
• Hands-on experience with LLM integrations:
  • LLM providers
  • Vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus)
  • Model serving (vLLM, TGI, KServe)
• Experience with MLOps and production deployments
• Understanding of enterprise challenges:
  • Security, compliance, scalability, cost optimization.
• Experience with relational and non-relational databases.
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills (fluent in English; German is a strong plus).
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, o ra related field.
• Experience with multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Experience with code optimization (e.g., model quantization, parallelization).

Benefits

• A great compensation package with competitive benefits, including:
• Flexible working hours, including remote work options (hybrid model).
• 25 days of paid vacation per year, plus additional flex days.
• Private health and life insurance & pension plan for long-term security.
• Home office allowance & Lunch vouchers to enjoy meals on us.
• Discounted fitness memberships to stay active.
• 50% reimbursement of public transport costs.
• Free coffee, fruit, and snacks to keep you fueled.
• Access to the latest technologies (LangDock, Claude Code for developers)
• Grants for training, coaching, and conferences to support your continuous learning.
• Opportunities to attend industry events and represent vector8 as a thought leader.
• A less-formal work environment where authenticity and collaboration thrive.
• A diverse and inclusive team that values curiosity, ownership, and innovation.

Why This Role is Unique

• You will work at the intersection of AI research and enterprise software engineering, with a strong focus on AI-driven solutions.
• You will contribute to shaping the future of AI adoption in France’s most complex organizations.
• You will bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI and real-world enterprise constraints (security, compliance, legacy systems).
• You will grow your skills, collaborate with talented engineers, and have real ownership over your work from day one.