Data
Applied AI / Data-AI Engineer
DataRotterdam (hybrid)Full-time (40h)
You understand that AI is more than an LLM call. Many client questions start with "can we use AI for this?" and the right answer is sometimes an LLM, sometimes a deterministic workflow, matching algorithm or classifier that is cheaper and more reliable. You work at the intersection of data, AI and practical software, and help decide which approach actually fits.
What you’ll do
- Build data and AI solutions in Python.
- Design solutions using LLMs, matching, ranking and classification.
- Judge when to use LLMs, embeddings, classic ML, rules or deterministic workflows.
- Work with structured and unstructured data: documents, tables, emails, images, CRM data.
- Develop pipelines for data cleaning, preprocessing, deduplication and enrichment.
- Build and improve RAG systems from retrieval quality, metadata and evaluation.
- Apply techniques like similarity search, nearest-neighbor search, clustering and classification.
- Set up evaluation sets and metrics to judge AI and matching quality.
What you bring
- Experience as a data, AI or ML engineer, data scientist or analytics engineer.
- Strong Python and SQL, comfortable working with datasets.
- Understanding of embeddings, similarity search, ranking, matching or clustering.
- Knowledge of RAG, retrieval, metadata and document processing.
- Experience with data cleaning, preprocessing and data quality.
- Able to evaluate solutions with metrics and test sets.
- You know when an LLM is overkill and a classic approach is better.
- Good Dutch and English. HBO or WO level.
Nice to have
- pandas, Polars, scikit-learn, NumPy, PyTorch or spaCy.
- Vector databases like Qdrant, Weaviate, Pinecone, pgvector or Chroma.
- Hybrid, keyword or semantic search, or reranking.
- Data pipelines: Airflow, dbt or Dagster.
- PostgreSQL, DuckDB, BigQuery or Snowflake.
- Computer vision or image similarity is a plus.
Sounds like you?
Email your CV and a short cover letter to hr@whatsnext.cc, and tell us why this Applied AI / Data-AI Engineer role is a fit. We read every application properly.