Gesloten vacatures architect Amsterdam

We are looking for a Director of Engineering to lead the development and scaling of next-generation AI-powered capabilities that enable real-world decision‑making in complex customer environments. This is not a purely technical leadership role – it demands someone who has operated at the intersection of technology, product strategy, and market commercialisation, and who understands how to turn platform capabilities into compelling, differentiated products that win in the market.

This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, applied AI, and product innovation, and requires a leader who can bridge strategy and execution. You will drive the development of core capabilities that integrate deeply into customer and partner ecosystems, shaping how intelligent systems interact with real‑world data and constraints. You bring a portfolio mindset, able to manage trade‑offs across multiple products and capability investments simultaneously, balancing short‑term delivery with long‑term platform value, and making deliberate decisions about where to build, partner, or retire.

You will work closely with Product, Business Development, and executive leadership to define and execute a roadmap that aligns with emerging trends in agentic AI, orchestration frameworks, and applied intelligence platforms.

• AI & Technology Strategy: Act as an Agentic AI strategist, evaluating emerging technologies and translating them into market opportunities that the engineering team will address. Drive decisions that improve system performance, cost efficiency, and reliability. Shape build vs. Partner strategy in a rapidly evolving ecosystem. Apply broad industry knowledge and commercial awareness to ensure technology decisions contribute to financial performance and competitive differentiation. You understand not only what is technically possible but what the market will reward and you use that lens to prioritize ruthlessly across portfolio of platform capabilities.
• Strategic and technical leadership: Define and drive the technical direction of AI-powered platform capabilities. Own architectural vision and ensure coherence across all system components. Act as the primary technical authority on system design and evolution.
• Platform & Architecture: Define and drive a platform-oriented architecture enabling integration into diverse customer and partner ecosystems. Ensure capabilities are designed as a cohesive system, not fragmented components. Guide architectural decisions across services, APIs, and execution flows. Architect with commercial intent ensuring platform components are not only technically sound but designed to be adopted, monetised, and positioned as differentiated offerings in the market.
• Product & Market Alignment: Partner with Product and business development to align engineering with market needs and customer outcomes. Support key customer engagements and external partnerships. You operate as a full peer to Product leader, contributing to product strategy, go‑to‑market definition, pricing frameworks, and launch readiness. You have deep familiarity with product processes. You understand customer segments, competitive dynamics, and buying behaviour well enough to inform the technical decisions without relying entirely on product or marketing to translate the market for you.
• Cross‑functional Leadership: Align multiple teams and stakeholders around a shared direction in a complex environment. Drive clarity in areas of ambiguity and overlapping ownership. Negotiate and influence senior leaders across the business to secure resources, resolve cross‑functional challenges, and drive alignment on group strategy and priorities. Direct resolution of highly complex and unique technical and business problems within the Agentic AI, spanning across organisational boundaries and involving significant technical uncertainty and high strategic business consequences.

• 15+ years of experience in a senior engineering leadership role with hands‑on Agentic AI development work in delivering complex, production‑grade systems.
• Strong experience with technical product management and product‑oriented, outside‑in engineering.
• Strong experience building horizontal platforms or reusable products (e.g. SDK, APIs or developer‑facing platforms).
• Ability to evaluate emerging technologies quickly and translate them into opportunities that can be assessed with Product and Business Development and translated into practical engineering decisions.
• Demonstrated experience with product portfolio management, making explicit decisions about investment levels, capability prioritisation, and retirement across a set of products or platform components at different lifecycle stages.
• Fluency in go‑to‑market processes: you understand how products are positioned, launched, and communicated to the market. You have partnered closely with Product Marketing or have directly driven positioning work for technical products or platforms.
• Market and competitive awareness: you track industry dynamics, understand customer buying behaviour in B2B SaaS or platform contexts, and use that understanding to shape engineering and product direction, not just to inform it after the fact.
• Experience with agentic AI systems, orchestration frameworks or tool ecosystems.
• Strong background in distributed systems, backend engineering – Python, Rust and Typescript, and cloud platforms (e.g. AWS).
• Experience launching new products or platforms from early stage to scale.
• Deep understanding of modern AI systems, including LLMs, agent frameworks, and tool‑based architecture.
• Strong systems thinker: able to design cohesive architecture rather than isolated components.
• Ability to operate in ambiguity and drive clarity across teams.

• Hybrid model of work
• Challenging problems to solve
• Collaborative and encouraging colleagues
• Opportunities to learn, grow and develop: company hackathons, technical talks, and trainings
• Regular feedbacks
• Paid vacation days
• A great work‑life balance
• Flexible working hours
• Competitive salary plus bonus
• Diverse team of talented people from 60+ countries worldwide.
• Brown bag talks, team events, BBQ on the rooftop and more!

HERE is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, colour, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.