Forward Deployed Engineer

Leading German Listed Company | Germany | €120,000 + Benefits | Permanent

AI Futures has been engaged exclusively by the Group CTO of one of Germany's top companies to build a brand new AI transformation team. This is one of the foundational hires.

The company

An MDAX-listed group with €2bn+ in annual revenue and a record 2025 financial year. They have spent two years building enterprise-grade data infrastructure and now have the financial platform, board mandate, and leadership in place to execute a full AI transformation. Their first-ever Group CTO is leading the programme to make this company AI-native.

The role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer you will be embedded directly into business functions (Finance, Legal, HR and Procurement) to identify automation opportunities and build the AI and ML solutions that deliver them.

This is hands-on, end-to-end work. You identify the process, access the data, determine the right approach. You build and ship the solution. You will be working in a complex, fragmented legacy environment where navigating imperfect data conditions is as important as technical depth.

You will be one of FDEs in a team being built from scratch - among the first people defining what AI automation looks like at a company of this scale.

What you'll do

• Run process discovery workshops with internal stakeholders (in German) to identify and prioritise automation opportunities
• Determine the right technical approach per use case: traditional ML, Gen AI, or hybrid
• Build data access layers and pipelines on top of an existing enterprise data mesh (Databricks)
• Design and implement AI/ML solutions from prototype to production
• Work with the AI Enterprise Solutions Architect to ensure your solutions scale and are governed

What you'll bring

• Hands-on experience applying AI and ML to real business problems - you have shipped things into production, not just modelled them
• Python and SQL - essential. Databricks experience a strong advantage.
• A process-oriented mindset and comfort in fragmented, legacy data environments
• C1 German - hard requirement. You must run stakeholder workshops and internal discovery sessions in German.
• 80/20 thinking - you build to 80% of perfect quickly and iterate, rather than waiting for perfect conditions
• Background in consulting, applied data science, or process optimisation.

Desirable

• PyTorch / MLflow
• AWS and Azure cloud environments
• SAP familiarity

Package & Details

€120,000 base salary + benefits

Permanent | Cologne/Düsseldorf preferred - Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich okay

Hybrid: 3 days in office | Travel: weekly initially, 1–3 days/month thereafter

AI Futures have been engaged exclusively for this search.

If this sounds like an exciting challenge to you please apply below.

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