AI Engineering Manager
Rohlik
Job Title: AI Engineering Manager (Generative Systems & Automation)
Reporting to: Head of Data & AI
The Opportunity: A Transformative Vision
At Rohlik Group, we are architecting the future of retail through intelligent automation. Our vision is to create a truly autonomous organization, where AI-driven systems optimize every facet of our business, from supply chain logistics and inventory management to hyper-personalized customer experiences.
We are seeking a pioneering AI Engineering Manager to lead a team of specialists and drive the delivery of our most critical AI initiatives. This is a "player-coach" role for a leader who is passionate about building production-grade generative AI and mentoring the talent that makes it possible. You will be expected to maintain a 70% hands-on contribution, actively building alongside your team. You will guide technical strategy, own project delivery across multiple business tribes, and be responsible for creating the systems that redefine efficiency and innovation in our industry. If you are driven to lead, build, and ship intelligent systems that have a tangible, large-scale impact, we invite you to join us on this transformative journey.
What You Will Lead & Build (Responsibilities)
As an AI Engineering Manager, you will be responsible for the technical excellence, strategic delivery, and growth of your team. Your responsibilities will blend hands-on engineering with leadership and cross-functional project management.
Team Leadership & Mentorship:
Lead, manage, and mentor a team of AI Engineers, fostering their technical and professional growth through coaching, feedback, and career development planning.
Cultivate a culture of innovation, collaboration, and engineering excellence within the team.
Partner with talent acquisition to attract, hire, and retain top-tier AI engineering talent.
Champion best practices for software development, code quality, and system design.
Strategic & Cross-Functional Delivery:
Take ultimate responsibility for the successful delivery of complex AI projects and services that span multiple business tribes, ensuring alignment and seamless integration.
Collaborate with product managers, business stakeholders, and other engineering leaders to define project roadmaps and translate business requirements into a clear technical vision.
Effectively communicate technical strategies, project status, and results to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including executive leadership.
Hands-On Technical Contribution (70%):
Architect Advanced Generative AI Systems: Lead the design and personally contribute to the development of autonomous AI agents that can reason, plan, and execute complex business processes by interacting with internal APIs and toolsets.
Drive LLM Strategy: Guide the selection and application of both open-source and proprietary Large Language Models (LLMs) to create specialized agentic systems that are optimized for performance, cost, and accuracy.
Master End-to-End Productionization (LLMOps): Implement and oversee comprehensive observability and monitoring for all team-owned AI systems using platforms like Langfuse or Datadog.
Optimize for Quality & Cost: Establish rigorous evaluation frameworks and proactively manage the cost-efficiency of our AI systems by implementing strategies such as intelligent model routing, caching, and prompt optimization.
The Profile We're Looking For (Qualifications)
We are looking for a pragmatic and product-focused leader who combines deep technical expertise with a strategic mindset and a passion for building high-performing teams and impactful AI solutions.
Leadership & Management Experience (Must-Have):
Proven experience in a technical leadership role, including managing, mentoring, or formally leading a team of software or AI engineers.
Demonstrated success in delivering complex, cross-functional technical projects from inception to production.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences and build consensus.
Generative AI Expertise (Must-Have):
Expert-level, hands-on experience building and deploying production-grade systems using Large Language Models (LLMs).
Deep expertise in architecting and optimizing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, including extensive experience with vector databases.
Demonstrated experience with agentic frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex) and implementing tool use via function calling.
Experience with building agentic systems utilizing MCP servers for tools
Foundational & Production Skills (Must-Have):
A strong background in software engineering with expert proficiency in Python.
Experience building and deploying applications on a major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
Deep experience deploying, monitoring, and maintaining systems in a production environment, including familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD principles.
Knowledge of LLMOps principles and tools for versioning, observability, evaluation, and cost management.
Why You'll Thrive Here
Lead with Autonomy: You will have the autonomy to shape your team's direction and technical strategy, owning critical AI products from conception to decommission and directly influencing our company's future.
Amplify Your Impact: Your work, both as an individual contributor and as a leader, will be amplified across a talented team, translating directly into measurable business outcomes.
Solve Cutting-Edge Problems: You and your team will tackle unique challenges at the intersection of AI and online retail, from building sophisticated supply chain automation agents to creating novel, personalized shopping experiences.
Drive the Tech Stack: You will lead your team in using the latest and most powerful tools in the generative AI ecosystem, with the freedom to experiment and choose the best technologies for the job.
About Rohlik
Making customers happy in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Romania.
