Senior Backend AI Engineer

About the role

NIQ, a well-funded company developing a cloud-based, self-service customer analytics and personalization solution for retailers, is looking for an experienced Senior Developer with deep expertise in Python and AI. The role focuses on building AI-powered applications and agentic AI systems that can autonomously perform complex tasks.

Key responsibilities

• Design and build autonomous AI agents capable of multi-step reasoning and task execution
• Work with LLMs and agentic frameworks such as AutoGen and the Microsoft Agent Framework
• Implement microservices from design to production, owning development, maintenance, testing strategy, design discussions and operations of containerized API services
• Take part in all aspects of agile software development, from design and implementation to deployment
• Own the end-to-end lifecycle of new product features and components, ensuring performance, uptime and scale while keeping code quality high
• Research and suggest new technologies, influence system architecture and development practices, and work with a small cross-functional team

Required profile

• B.Sc. in Computer Science or similar
• At least 5 years of experience in Python backend development
• 1+ year building agentic AI systems or autonomous agents
• Experience with agent frameworks and orchestration tools (AutoGen, LangChain, CrewAI or similar)
• Understanding of ReAct, Chain-of-Thought and other reasoning patterns, and of tool use and function calling
• Experience with agent evaluation, testing, safety, reliability and error handling

Required skills

• Python backend development, OOP and design patterns
• Prompt engineering and optimization
• FastAPI, Pydantic, Alembic, Docker, Kubernetes and cloud environments
• Testing (unit tests, TDD, mocking) and relational SQL databases
• Advantageous: Java, Spring, Azure / GCP, large-scale SQL/NoSQL databases, Agile or XP, Azure OpenAI and Azure AI services

What we offer

• Flexible working environment
• Volunteer time off
• LinkedIn Learning
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)