Senior AI Engineer

About us

KIWI is not just a company, it's a revolution. Since 2019, we have been passionately committed to creating innovative solutions that improve people's lives, helping as many smokers as possible quit smoking. With our headquarters in Croatia and a rapidly expanding international presence, our goal is to become the reference brand in Europe and a global benchmark in the e-cigarette industry.

Our products combine cutting-edge design, innovative technology and a strong commitment to sustainability, proving that changing the world is possible, one step at a time.

KIWI is looking for a Product Manager to join its international team.

The role

We're looking for a Senior AI Engineer to help us build and maintain our internal AI stack. Hands-on role with direct exposure to the tech lead: wide operational autonomy, but architectural and stack decisions are discussed and approved before go-live. You'll work closely with whoever drives the technical roadmap, not in isolation.

Domains you'll work on

• Italian-language audio/voice AI pipelines on on-prem infrastructure (privacy by design)
• Autonomous LLM agent orchestration with cost, turn, and human-in-the-loop guardrails
• OCR and classification on domain-specific documents
• AI integration with the company's ERP and e-commerce platforms
• UI development from existing designs, accelerated with AI tooling

Core technologies

• Python 3.11+, async ecosystem, testing, structured logging
• PHP at operational level, for working on existing e-commerce platforms
• Applied LLMs: Anthropic Claude (SDK and headless mode), Ollama, local runtimes on Apple Silicon, Whisper
• Agent tooling: design and implementation of custom MCP servers, resumable LLM session orchestration, integration with internal tools
• Italian NLP: spaCy, Italian-specific sentiment and topic models, multilingual embeddings
• Frontend: modern HTML/CSS/JS
• On-prem deploy on macOS, secure remote access
• Agentic Git workflow: parallel worktrees, issue-driven, PRs with mandatory human review

Candidate profile

Must Have

• 4–6 years in AI/ML engineering or senior Python backend with recent LLM-in-production experience
• At least one NLP/AI pipeline shipped to production (not just prototypes)
• You've written at least one custom MCP server and can justify tool design, schema, and error-handling choices
• Comfortable with Anthropic/OpenAI APIs at tool-use and cost-management level
• Operational PHP (debug, maintenance, small developments on existing codebases)
• Italian native or C1; fluent technical English
• Collaborative approach: able to discuss and justify technical choices, accept reviews and scope revisions

Nice to Have

• You've shipped local LLM runtimes (Ollama, MLX, vLLM) and know where they break
• Experience with ERP platforms (Odoo or similar), even just on the integration side
• Experience with Magento or PHP-based e-commerce platforms
• Ability to read Figma designs and translate them into frontend code; use of Figma MCP or AI-assisted design-to-code workflows
• You've designed autonomous agents with guardrails (cost cap, turn cap, human escalation)

Engagement & compensation

• Italian VAT (P.IVA).
• Monthly retainer €5,500–6,500 + VAT (equivalent to €60–70k gross salary)
• Continuous consulting contract, annual renewal, 25 non-billed days/year by agreement
• Hardware provided

Work mode

Full-time. On-site at Buje, Croatia required for the first 4–6 months (technical onboarding and shadowing). After this period, work mode will be defined by HR based on performance and operational needs.