AI Engineer

About the opportunity

The Virtual Assistant team is on a mission to redefine how N26 customers interact with their bank. We believe the future of banking is conversational, and we are currently making a strategic investment in Generative AI to rethink our entire ecosystem. We aren’t just looking for someone to maintain chatbots; we want a Mid-Level AI Engineer who is ready to build the next generation of intelligent, multi-channel experiences.

As part of this team, you’ll help us bridge the gap between complex banking needs and seamless, human-like automation. If you’re passionate about moving beyond traditional flows and into the world of LLMs, RAG, and truly autonomous agents, we want to talk to you.

Your core mission is delivery, optimized for velocity and reliability: taking proven AI/ML models, LLM prototypes, and intelligent agents and integrating them directly into our product infrastructure. You will be obsessed with scalability, observability/evaluations, and speed, ensuring our AI solutions move swiftly and reliably from a proof-of-concept to a production-ready, highly monitored service that directly levels up the conversation experience of our customers. This role requires a unique T-shaped skillset blending Data Engineering, Applied AI, and Backend engineering understanding.

In this role, you will:

• Drive Fast Time-to-Market (TTM): Work collaboratively with relevant stakeholders (Data Science, Machine Learning Engineering, etc.) to iterate quickly on prototypes, ensuring a seamless and rapid transition of validated models and LLM applications into the production environment.

• Productionize AI/LLM Prototypes: Act as the primary link between the DS/AI team's prototypes and the customer-facing product. You will refactor, deploy, and maintain robust, performant AI services (including LLM-powered features and intelligent agents) in a high-traffic production environment.

• Build Observability and Measurement Systems: Implement comprehensive observability solutions (evaluations, metrics, tracing, logging) for all deployed AI features. Design and execute a framework for measuring output quality, A/B testing different models/prompts, and iterating on performance in real-time.

• Architect for Reliability and Scale: Collaborate within the team to design and implement the technical architecture, data pipelines, and orchestration systems necessary to support AI services. Focus on building highly available, low-latency APIs and ensuring proper monitoring, logging, and failure handling across the entire lifecycle.

• Design and Deploy Custom AI Services: Collaborate with the Platform Engineering team on leveraging foundational models (like those from AWS Bedrock/Anthropic) managed by them. Your focus will be on designing, building, and deploying the surrounding application logic and custom components, such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, Agents that interact with those foundational models.

• Apply Advanced AI Techniques: Directly implement and optimize advanced Applied AI techniques, such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent-to-Agent (A2A) flows, and fine-tuning methodologies.

• Contribute to Discovery: Leverage your deep understanding of system constraints, data availability, and production feasibility to proactively identify and recommend new AI use cases, working closely with Product and Data Science.

What you need to be successful:

• Proven experience building, deploying, and maintaining machine learning or LLM-based applications in a production environment.

• Hybrid Technical Skills: A strong blend of experience across the required disciplines:

• Backend Engineering: Proficiency in developing scalable, reliable backend services (mainly Python, Kotlin) with a focus on API design and microservices architecture.

• Applied AI Engineering & MLOps: Hands-on experience with LLM frameworks, vector databases, MLOps tooling, prompt engineering, and successfully implementing advanced techniques like RAG. Demonstrated ability to manage models and prompt updates safely.

• Data Engineering: Familiarity with building robust data pipelines, managing feature stores, and ensuring data quality for model consumption.

• Infrastructure Expertise: Solid understanding and prior practical knowledge of cloud environments (specifically AWS) and deploying scalable containerized services (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker) are a big plus. Experience with model/LLM serving platforms (e.g., SageMaker, Bedrock, Vertex AI) is highly desirable.

• A Focus on Outcome: A passion for moving fast and achieving tangible business outcomes (like decreasing escalation rates) by turning complex technical ideas into reliable, high-impact product features.

• Passion for Knowledge Transfer and Feedback: You will become part of a collaborative, cross-functional team, with diverse levels of experience and seniority in AI. Our success is built on a foundation of mutual learning and teamwork.

What’s in it for you:

• Accelerate your career growth by joining one of Europe’s most talked about disruptors 🚀.
• Employee benefits that range from a competitive personal development budget, work from home budget, discounts to fitness & wellness memberships, language apps and public transportation.
• As an N26 employee you will have access to a Premium subscription on your personal N26 bank account. As well as subscriptions for friends and family members.
• Additional day of annual leave for each year of service.
• A high degree of autonomy and access to cutting edge technologies - all while working with a friendly team of peers of diverse nationalities, experiences, and backgrounds.
• A relocation package with visa support for those who need it.

Who we are

N26 has reimagined banking for today’s digital world. Technology and design empower everything we do and it’s how we are building the global banking platform the world loves to use.

We've eliminated physical branches, paperwork, and hidden fees for an elegant digital experience and supreme savings. Giving people the power to live and bank their way is what gets us out of bed in the morning and inspires the work that we do.

We are headquartered in Berlin with offices in multiple cities across Europe, including Vienna and Barcelona, and a 1,500-strong team of more than 80 nationalities.

Do you see yourself thriving in this role? We’d love to see your application even if you don’t meet 100% of the criteria. You may just be the right fit for this or other roles!

Equal opportunities for all

At N26, we believe our strength lies in our people and the varied perspectives they bring. We strive to build diverse teams that drive innovation and business success. We actively seek talent from all backgrounds and welcome applications from all genders, cultures, sexual orientations, abilities, neurodiversities, and ages.

We are committed to providing an excellent and accessible candidate experience. If you require any accommodations to make this process work for you, please let us know. We’re here to support you!

Discover more about Diversity & Inclusion at N26: https://n26.com/en-eu/diversity-and-inclusion