AI Engineering Director

Permanent | Hybrid (Amsterdam) | 

Riverflex is building a frontier AI engineering practice — the kind our clients wish existed as they navigate complex intelligent transformation programmes. You lead it. You own developing the architecture, the team, our products & accelerators, and the trajectory of AI engineering at Riverflex. This is not a management-only role: you architect and code alongside your team, ship systems to production for blue-chip clients, and develop the reusable accelerators that make our delivery best-in-class. 

This role reports directly to the founders and carries a clear path to Director — Riverflex's most senior level — with a profit-share compensation model that rewards practice ownership. You co-create new service offerings as the AI market evolves, sit in the room with C-level clients, and partner with the founding team on commercial growth. The path is yours to build.

Riverflex was founded in Amsterdam and London in 2018, eventually growing into a global team of consultants united by a mission to help courageous leaders drive transformative change. Today, we offer an integrated service through three service pillars: strategy and transformation consulting that Creates Change, talent services that Build Teams, and business-accelerating products that Augment Intelligence. For more information, visit www.riverflex.com. 

• Architect and ship AI systems for complex client engagements — meaningful production work, not pilots that die in PowerPoint 

• Own system design decisions across LLM-based applications, agentic architectures, RAG pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and model routing 

• Serve as senior technical lead on client engagements 

• Drive technical quality, code review, and engineering standards across the AI practice 

• Design and ship at least one core reusable Riverflex AI accelerator (e.g. agentic harness, eval framework, RAG pipeline template) within the first year 

• Co-develop new client service offerings in partnership with the strategy team as the AI landscape evolves 

• Allocate time to R&D, internal IP, and new offering development 

• Scale the AI engineering team within 12 months — hire, calibrate, and retain 

• Set the bar for engineering talent: own hiring loops, technical assessments, and onboarding 

• Develop engineers through coaching, pairing, and structured growth paths 

• Partner with founders in C-level client conversations — co-piloting in year one, with growing autonomy by month 12 

• Scope complex AI engagements, translating client problems into deliverable technical architectures 

• Contribute to practice growth through commercial credibility and client trust 

• 10+ years of engineering experience, with meaningful time leading technical teams (4–5+ years in technical leadership) 

• Deep capability in modern AI systems: LLMs, agentic architectures, RAG, evaluation, model routing 

• Proven ability to architect and ship production systems — not just prototype or advise 

• Hands-on with hiring, calibration, and developing engineers 

• Comfortable with ambiguity, allergic to bureaucracy 

• English fluent 

• Production GenAI track record (we are equally open to candidates who will build this track record at Riverflex) 

• Ex-startup CTO (Series A–C, AI-first product company), senior staff/principal engineer at a scale-up (e.g. Booking, Adyen, Picnic, Mollie), or frontier-lab IC (e.g. Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepMind, Mistral, Cohere) ready to commercialise 

• Dutch language skills 

• Experience with consulting delivery or client-facing technical advisory 

You anchor AI engineering at Riverflex for the next 3–5 years. The mandate is real: scale a team, ship production AI for blue-chip clients, and build the IP that defines how Riverflex delivers. The founders are in the room with you, the clients are serious, and the autonomy is yours from day one. If you've hit a ceiling on ownership elsewhere, this is the role where you build the practice you've been waiting for. 

Interested in this role? Submit your CV and a brief note on your relevant experience through the Riverflex website or reach out to our talent team directly. 

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and take pride in a diverse environment. We do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital status, medical condition, or disability. Even if you believe you do not tick all the aforementioned requirements for the role, we still encourage you to take the time to apply.