Principal AI Engineer (Berlin, hybrid)

We’re in an exciting growth phase following our Series B funding and are expanding our team. Our hybrid working culture includes three office days per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) at our Berlin headquarters. Looking ahead, we’re also growing London as our second location, with a new office planned for 2025.

A little about us

• Redefining graphic design: Kittl is transforming how creators work with an intuitive platform that stands as a modern, competitive alternative to traditional design tools: Build the new Adobe of tomorrow.

• Rapid growth: Millions of users within just two years of launch

• Diverse team: 120+ team members representing 30+ different countries

• Truly product-led company: Engineers, Product managers and designers are at the core of Kittl - shaping an engineering driven working culture

• Strong funding: Raised over $45M from world-renowned investors who have also backed companies like Slack, Dropbox, and Figma

Learn more: www.kittl.com/career

Your role at Kittl

As a Principal AI Engineer at Kittl, you will lead the AI Platform team, driving AI initiatives across the company and ensuring seamless integration of state of the art models into our product ecosystem. Your work will directly influence the development of transformative features, optimizing workflows, and scaling AI-powered capabilities, specifically for graphic design. You will collaborate closely with product and business stakeholders to align AI advancements with strategic goals while maintaining and evolving the internal AI infrastructure. You will report to the CTO.

What you’ll do 

• Lead AI infrastructure development: Architect, maintain, and evolve the internal AI inference infrastructure to support scalable and efficient model deployment

• Drive AI strategy & roadmap: Develop and execute the technical roadmap for AI at Kittl, aligning it with business objectives while identifying opportunities for AI-driven innovation across the company. Establish best practices, ethical guidelines, and governance frameworks to ensure responsible AI adoption and a sustainable, long-term AI strategy

• Enable cross-team AI adoption: Establish processes and best practices to help product managers and engineers uncover AI opportunities, fostering AI-driven decision-making across teams

• Optimize AI performance & efficiency: Ensure robust, scalable, and cost-effective AI inference by optimizing model deployment, resource allocation, and infrastructure scalability

• Bridge product & business needs: Work closely with product and business teams to translate high-level goals into actionable AI solutions, ensuring AI initiatives deliver measurable impact

What you’ll need

• Experience with Gen AI & deep learning: At least 5 years of demonstrated success in deploying and optimizing deep learning models in production, with at least 1-2 years of focus on diffusion models

• Leadership: At least 2 years in a leadership role guiding teams and defining AI strategy

• Infrastructure & scalability expertise: Strong knowledge of AI infrastructure, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and model optimization techniques for efficient deployment

• Strategic & leadership skills: Ability to define and execute an AI strategy, aligning technical roadmaps with business goals while guiding cross-functional teams

• Hands-on technical skills: Proficiency in Python, Pytorch, Diffusers, and distributed computing frameworks

• Strong communication & collaboration: Ability to convey complex AI concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders, driving alignment and adoption across teams

• Continuous learning & adaptability: Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in AI, ensuring Kittl remains at the forefront of innovation in a rapidly evolving field

Interview process

• Recruiter interview (30 min)

• Hiring manager interview (45 min)

• Technical take home assignment

• Take home assignment discussion (60 min)

• Gen AI system design interview (30 min)

• Engineering leadership interview with CTO (30 min)

• Product Manager & Chief of Staff bar raiser interview (45 min)

We are looking for someone

• Exceptionally driven to drive impact and challenge the status quo

• Who takes extreme ownership & gets things done

• Who goes above and beyond in their role

• Who is deeply passionate about what they do

Benefits

• Maximise your impact: No matter if you’re leading a team or you stand out by your domain expertise - all we care about is supporting you to maximise your own impact

• Hackathons: Our quarterly hackathons provide an environment to experiment with new concepts, push boundaries, and potentially deliver the next big thing.

• Kittl Week: Each year, our global team gathers together for a whole week, to work, celebrate, get inspired, and have fun

• Flexible working hours: Our core hours are 11am–5pm CET, leaving the rest of your schedule flexible to fit your style

• Remote work: Work up to 50 days (10 weeks) fully remote per year from anywhere in the world, as long as you maintain our core hours

• Learning & development: Our L&D budget supports your professional growth 

• Mobility benefit: We fully cover your monthly BVG public transport ticket

• Health and fitness: Urban Sports Club membership discount

• Vacation: Up to 30 vacation days per year

#li-hybrid

🌈 At Kittl, we embrace diversity and value every team member's unique background, identity, and experience. We're all about respect, honesty, and inclusivity. Together, we create a safe and supportive work environment where everyone thrives. Join us on this exciting journey of making our company and product even better!