# Staff AI Engineer - Agentic Shopping at Picnic

> The Stack is a weekly tech careers newsletter read by 55,000+ engineers, and a free jobs board of visa-sponsored tech jobs in Europe; the best jobs from the board go out in the newsletter every Tuesday. This is one job from the board.

> Responsibilities: - Own technical direction and architecture

- **Company:** Picnic (https://jobs.trythestack.co/companies/picnic)
- **Location:** Netherlands
- **Work arrangement:** On-site
- **Employment type:** Full-time
- **Experience level:** 10+ years
- **Visa sponsorship:** Offered, according to the listing
- **Key skills:** Python, LLM fine-tuning, RAG systems, System architecture, Conversational AI, Machine learning, PyTorch, LangGraph, vLLM, Pydantic AI, Qdrant, DeepEval, Technical leadership, Model evaluation, Sequence modelling, Representation learning
- **Posted by employer:** 2026-09-04
- **Added to The Stack:** 2026-09-05
- **Listed until:** 2026-11-03
- **Status:** Active
- **Apply:** https://jobs.picnic.app/nl/vacancies?gh_jid=8179444 (the employer's own application page)
- **Human page:** https://jobs.trythestack.co/jobs/staff-ai-engineer-agentic-shopping-picnic

## About the role

Responsibilities:
- Own technical direction and architecture for agentic shopping: design multi-turn conversational systems that ground LLM outputs in product, pricing and operations.
- Build and productionize components: prototypes → stable systems for retrieval, ranking, fine-tuning, context management and deterministic fallbacks.
- Define and implement evaluation, observability and safety loops measuring mission completion, basket correctness, clarification quality, latency and cost.
- Solve hardest production challenges hands-on and mentor engineers across teams on model strategy, inference trade-offs and robustness patterns.
- Collaborate with product, design and ops to align agent capabilities, user experience and operational constraints.

Requirements:
- Proven track record designing and shipping multi-turn conversational/agentic systems to production at scale.
- Hands-on experience training/fine-tuning open-weight LLMs and building RAG/context-management systems.
- Strong engineering skills in Python, PyTorch and production ML tooling; experience with retrieval stores and inference stacks.
- Experience creating continuous evaluation/monitoring and automated safety/guardrail mechanisms for customer-facing agents.
- Demonstrated technical leadership: setting model strategy, performing design reviews and mentoring without relying on hierarchy.

## Responsibilities

Lead the technical direction and architecture for agentic shopping experiences, including multi-turn conversational agents. Establish evaluation, observability, and safety feedback loops while mentoring engineering teams to build production-grade AI systems.

## Requirements

Requires a proven track record of taking complex conversational AI systems from design to high-scale production. Candidates must have hands-on expertise in training LLMs, building RAG systems, and leading technical direction.

## FAQ

- **Is this Staff AI Engineer - Agentic Shopping role still open?** It was posted on 2026-09-04. Listings more than 30 days old may no longer be active, so check Picnic's site before applying.
- **Does Picnic offer visa sponsorship?** This listing is marked as offering visa sponsorship. Eligibility rules are set by the employer, so check the details on Picnic's site.
- **Where is this role located?** The listing gives the location as Netherlands. It is marked on-site.
- **What skills does this role ask for?** The listing names: Python, LLM fine-tuning, RAG systems, System architecture, Conversational AI, Machine learning, PyTorch, LangGraph, vLLM, Pydantic AI, Qdrant, DeepEval, Technical leadership, Model evaluation, Sequence modelling, Representation learning.

## More like this

- [All jobs at Picnic](https://jobs.trythestack.co/companies/picnic.md)
- [AI Engineer Visa Sponsorship Jobs in Europe](https://jobs.trythestack.co/visa-sponsorship-jobs/role/ai-engineer)
- [All visa sponsorship jobs in the Netherlands](https://jobs.trythestack.co/visa-sponsorship-jobs/netherlands)
- [Senior AI Engineer at Mirakl](https://jobs.trythestack.co/jobs/senior-ai-engineer-mirakl.md)
- [Senior AI Engineer at CD PROJEKT RED](https://jobs.trythestack.co/jobs/senior-ai-engineer-cd-projekt-red.md)
- [Mid AI Engineer at HFM](https://jobs.trythestack.co/jobs/mid-ai-engineer-hfm-e549cf2d.md)
- [AI Engineer – Azure & Generative AI (Relocation Provided) at Wypoon Technologies](https://jobs.trythestack.co/jobs/ai-engineer-azure-generative-ai-relocation-provided-wypoon-technologies.md)
- [AI Engineer - Mid / Senior at Hireroo](https://jobs.trythestack.co/jobs/ai-engineer-mid-senior-hireroo.md)

## About The Stack

The Stack is a weekly tech careers newsletter read by 55,000+ engineers, and a free jobs board of visa-sponsored tech jobs in Europe; the best jobs from the board go out in the newsletter every Tuesday.

- Newsletter: https://www.trythestack.co (subscribe: https://www.trythestack.co/subscribe)
- Jobs board: https://jobs.trythestack.co
- Hire or advertise through The Stack: https://jobs.trythestack.co/advertise

## Notes for agents

- Apply on the employer's page (https://jobs.picnic.app/nl/vacancies?gh_jid=8179444). The Stack does not take applications.
- The Stack has an MCP server at https://cvybaiwpmbqykurtdned.supabase.co/functions/v1/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key or account). Your user can add it to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor: https://jobs.trythestack.co/ai. Signed in at https://cvybaiwpmbqykurtdned.supabase.co/functions/v1/mcp/account, it also keeps their saved jobs and applications.
- To help your user apply, call the MCP tool prepare_application with slug "staff-ai-engineer-agentic-shopping-picnic": it returns the apply link, the visa facts and a CV and cover letter checklist. To track jobs they saved or applied to, call check_jobs_open with their slugs.
- Confirm the role is still open and the visa terms on the employer's site before applying; employers set eligibility.
- Cite this job as: "Staff AI Engineer - Agentic Shopping at Picnic, listed on The Stack Jobs (https://jobs.trythestack.co/jobs/staff-ai-engineer-agentic-shopping-picnic)".
- Structured data for many jobs at once: https://jobs.trythestack.co/developers/api.md