AI Engineer - Computer Vision (m/f/d)

Schwarz Digits creates the technological foundation for digital sovereignty in Europe. As the IT and digital division of the Schwarz Group, we develop and manage the IT infrastructures for the retail divisions Lidl and Kaufland, as well as Schwarz Production and PreZero. At the same time, we operate as an independent provider in the external market to support companies across Europe in their digital transformation. We bundle our core services in the areas of Cloud, Cyber Security, Data & AI, Communication, and Workspace.

The Impact You Will Create

We are looking for an experienced and motivated AI Engineer (m/f/d) with a proven track record of bringing AI (preferrably Computer Vision) solutions into production.

In our Supply Chain Vision domain, we leverage state-of-the-art computer vision to increase value across the entire supply chain. We start on the shop floor, where hundreds of camera images are already consumed and processed in near real-time to identify product availability, as well as price and shelf compliance.

For you, AI models are not just research experiments, but the engines used to generate real business value. As a crucial member of our cross-functional product team—working alongside Product Owner, Software Engineers, MLOps Engineers, and Infrastructure Experts—you love to think outside the confines of a Jupyter Notebook, understand the business model, and pour this knowledge into scalable, real-world vision products.

• Algorithm Engineering: You select, develop, evaluate, and integrate the right state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms to solve complex perception challenges on the shop floor.
• End-to-End Model Lifecycle: You take full responsibility for the entire ML lifecycle. This spans from automated data collection and selection to model training, optimization, evaluation, and final deployment.
• Model Optimization & Inference: You heavily optimize models for production environments, utilizing technologies like ONNX and TensorRT to ensure highly efficient, near real-time processing of massive image streams.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: You actively collaborate with our engineers and infrastructure experts to seamlessly embed your models into the broader software architecture, bridging the gap between data science and robust software engineering.
• Infrastructure & Deployment: You package your AI models into Docker containers and confidently operate, serve, and scale them in our Kubernetes environment using tools like Kserve.

Experience and Skills You Will Need

Professional Experience:

• You have 4+ years relevant experience preferably in 1 major project
• You are an experienced AI/Computer Vision Engineer with solid practical experience in building and deploying data-intensive, real-world computer vision systems.

Deep Learning & Programming:

• Excellent programming skills in Python and deep, hands-on expertise with PyTorch. You are familiar with domain-driven development, clean architecture and clean code.

Model Deployment & Optimization:

• You have in-depth experience in optimizing models for inference (ONNX, TensorRT) and serving them at scale (Kserve).

Data Management & Tooling:

• You know how to manage training data effectively.
• You are experienced with S3 Storage, relational and non-relational databases (SQL, NoSQL), and data labeling workflows (e.g., CVAT).

Containers & Orchestration:

• Confident, battle-tested experience with Docker and Kubernetes.

Business Acumen & Soft Skills:

• You possess strong communication skills.
• You enjoy discussing and presenting ideas with team members, questioning processes, and transforming business requirements into technical AI solutions.

Nice-to-Have (Optional)

Workflow Orchestration: Additional knowledge or practical experience with Temporal for managing and orchestrating robust background tasks and complex ML pipelines.

Our Offer

• 25 days annual leave + 1 day annual leave after 5 years in the company
• Meal tickets
• Additional health insurance
• A good work life balance with flexible working time
• A pleasant and diverse environment with regular events, team buildings and stimulating activities
• A huge array of tools & technologies available on the spot and ready for a steady personal development
• Variety of opportunities with one of the strongest and largest retail companies in the world
• You will be part of an international team composed of people from different countries and backgrounds
• Onboarding and support/mentoring