Senior AI Engineer (R&D) (d/m/w)

About Us

In the Haufe Group, we create pioneering working conditions where each of us can contribute and develop optimally. With us, you receive space and responsibility, as well as the opportunity to work hybrid – meaning a combination of office presence and home office, depending on needs and agreement within your team. You also benefit from flexible working hours and have diverse training and development opportunities. We are tangible and officially a Great Place to Work®.

Job ID: REF408X

Haufe: Intelligent solutions that set standards. Haufe combines smart and unique solution offerings with legally sound expertise. We develop innovative products and use state-of-the-art AI technologies to make knowledge intuitively applicable. In this way, we support our customers in solving their specific questions faster and easier. We value diversity and are convinced that employees with diverse backgrounds bring different perspectives and strengths to our company. Therefore, we welcome all applications – regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic and social origin, religion/belief, disability, age, and sexual orientation and identity. As signatories of the Charta der Vielfalt, we are committed to diversity, tolerance, fairness, and appreciation.

Career level / career level: Professionals

Your Role

Do you want to not only follow the latest developments in Generative AI but actively evaluate, test, and implement them into real use cases? Do you combine scientific depth with a strong product understanding, lead structured experiments, and provide well-founded recommendations on which technologies offer strategic added value? Then, as a Senior AI Engineer (R&D) (d/f/m), you will significantly shape applied AI research and innovation at Haufe at our Freiburg im Breisgau location.

Responsibilities

Experiments with Substance:

• You conceptualize and lead experiments in the areas of NLP, Generative AI, and agentic systems – from hypothesis formation through execution to systematic evaluation.
• Each experiment pursues a clearly defined goal and delivers usable insights that feed into concrete decisions or product improvements.
• Your work is a link between new findings in research and application in products.

From Concept to Functional Prototype:

• You validate promising approaches not only theoretically but also implement them independently into functional prototypes and test them on large datasets – quickly, pragmatically, and with a clear focus on gaining insights.

Cross-Team Collaboration:

• You work closely with experts from different teams.
• You bring a complementary perspective with a clear focus on exploration, new approaches, and future-oriented technologies.
• You consciously operate in the dynamic interplay between research and practice.
• In your work, you draw on a solid foundation. You work closely with our AI Platform team to make new findings scalable and available to others.
• You also collaborate with the Legal Tech Lab, which combines technology and legal expertise.

Technology Evaluation and Strategic Recommendations:

• You systematically observe trends and new methods in NLP and Generative AI, evaluate their relevance for Haufe, and derive well-founded recommendations for action.

Knowledge Transfer:

• You shape the professional development at Haufe by strategically transferring your knowledge of NLP, Agentic Systems, and Generative AI into the organization – through technical presentations, workshops, or direct collaboration with teams.

Qualifications

Academic Background in NLP:

• At least a completed Master's degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Mathematics, or a related field.
• A PhD is an advantage – alternatively, equivalent experience in professional experimentation and innovation work.

Methodical Experimentation Culture:

• You master the conception of robust experiments – with precise hypotheses, clean experimental design, and meaningful evaluation.
• You are capable of writing understandable code.
• Conducting experiments and developing reproducible prototypes: Good research requires good engineering.

Experience:

• At least 3 years of professional experience in NLP, Machine Learning, or Generative AI.
• Haufe has an extensive specialist database, the intelligent searchability of which plays a central role.
• Experience in Information Retrieval and Knowledge Graphs is desirable.

Product Understanding:

• You don't just think in research results, but understand how your work can be translated into marketable products and measurable customer value.

Innovation and Communication Skills:

• You have proven experience in technically guiding colleagues, communicate complex issues clearly and structurally, and navigate confidently between scientific depth and strategic product perspective.
• You are at home in a dynamic environment where technologies and requirements are constantly evolving.

Language Skills:

• The language-specific challenges involved in working with technical texts require very good German skills (at least C1).
• Fluent English skills are also necessary – collaboration at our company takes place in both languages.

Location:

• Ideally, you work from our location in Freiburg – a remote setup may also be possible. In both cases, you should be willing to travel regularly for team and stakeholder appointments.