Staff Backend Engineer – AI

Stream ()s SDKs and APIs enable devs to build activity feeds chat and voice/video powering over a billion end users worldwide. Trusted by top brands like Strava Nextdoor Patreon and eBay were on a mission to make real-time communication and social experiences seamless for developers and their users.

Were also the makers of Vision Agents the open-source Python framework for building low-latency voice and video AI agents: over 8k stars on GitHub 35 model integrations and sub-500ms latency on our global edge network.

Were seeking a Staff AI Engineer to own model development on our AI team. Youll build fine-tune evaluate and ship the models that run inside Streams products end-to-end from dataset design through to production. As the technical owner you will drive key decisions independently shipping models that directly impact systems serving over a billion users.

Location: Office in Amsterdam or Remote (Europe). Occasional travel for in-person collaboration and meetups is encouraged.

Hybrid policy: applicants based in the Netherlands or relocating here are expected to work in the office in Amsterdam 3 times per week. Exemptions apply to specific cases.

• Own the development fine-tuning and evaluation of in-house AI models from dataset design through to production deployment.

• Run supervised fine-tuning and post-training experiments establishing the benchmarks and evaluation harnesses that tell us whether a model is actually good enough to ship.

• Build and maintain the data pipelines that feed model training keeping data quality labelling and reproducibility to a high standard.

• Take models to production on Streams serving stack tuning for latency cost and reliability at high volume.

• Set the technical direction for an intentionally undefined problem space deciding what to build what to test and what to abandon.

• Work across the wider engineering organisation interfacing with Go-based API teams and infrastructure to get models integrated into the product.

• Contribute to the open-source ecosystem where relevant and share work publicly through code writing or community engagement.

• Raise the bar on engineering standards across the AI team through code review mentorship and pragmatic best practices.

• 5 years of production-level Python engineering experience with code you have shipped and maintained rather than only prototyped.

• Hands-on machine learning experience specifically with supervised fine-tuning and post-training of models.

• Familiarity with the modern fine-tuning and serving toolchain e.g. Unsloth Fireworks Baseten or equivalents.

• Cloud experience with at least one major provider (GCP or AWS) including infrastructure-as-code with Terraform.

• Experience running ML-based products in production: not just training models but owning them through deployment monitoring retraining and iteration against real usage.

• Experience designing and operating data pipelines for training and evaluation; a data engineering background is a strong route into this role.

• Demonstrated ownership: a track record of picking up ambiguous problems and driving them to a result without waiting for direction.

• Strong communication skills and comfort working in a small distributed fast-moving team.

• A visible open-source footprint: libraries you have authored or maintained meaningful GitHub activity or contributions to AI model repositories.

• Experience with Go (all of Streams APIs use Go so it helps when interacting with other teams).

• Deep understanding of Pythons concurrency model and asyncios limitations in high-throughput systems.

• Experience with real-time or low-latency inference systems.

• Experience as an early engineer or founder or otherwise operating at startup pace with an undefined roadmap.

• Genuine Ownership: You own model development end to end: approach architecture evaluation and what ships. Not a slice of someone elses roadmap.

• Your Work Reaches Real Scale Immediately: Models go into production across products serving over a billion end users. Youll know quickly whether something worked because real traffic will tell you.

• Small Team Short Path: Were small enough that theres no layer between your decisions and their impact. If you want to test something you test itnot build a case for it over two quarters.

• Peers Who Ship: The same AI team built Vision Agents from nothing into a framework thousands of developers rely on. Youll be working next to the people who did it.

• Flexibility & Trust: Choose your work stylejoin us in Amsterdam or work remotely across Europewith periodic in-person collaboration.

Stream employees enjoy some of the best job benefits in the industry:

• A team of exceptional (and friendly) engineers

• The chance to work on OSS projects

• 28 days paid time off plus paid Dutch holidays

• Company equity

• A pension scheme

• A Learning and Development budget

• Commute expenses to Amsterdam covered or the option to use a company bike within the city

• Fitness stipend

• Monthly in-office chair massages by a professional

• MacBook Pro

• Healthy team lunches and plenty of snacks

• A generous relocation package

• An office in the heart of Amsterdam

Note: this list of job benefits applies to Netherlands-based employees and is adjusted per your location of residence.

Stream has a casual social culture our team is diverse and we all have different backgrounds. Now Stream is a team of over 120 peers from over 35 countries across the globe.

We value transparency aim for excellence and support each other on our way to new victories.

Our team consists of the strongest talents worldwide making Stream a great place to learn and improve your skills.

When it comes to software engineering jobs our culture is oriented towards ownership and quality: our goal is to deliver stable software.

Hybrid office policy: applicants based (or relocating to) one of our office locations are expected to work according to the applicable local office attendance policy.

Equal opportunity employer statement: Stream provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race color religion age sex national origin disability status genetics protected veteran status sexual orientation gender identity or expression or any other characteristic protected by federal state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment including recruiting hiring placement promotion termination layoff recall transfer leaves of absence compensation and training.

Note for external recruiters: We currently have this role covered and do not accept unsolicited agency resumes. We are not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

Required Experience:

Staff IC