AI Automation Engineer
By week four it runs in production. At a client you did not know, on data you did not design.
In two years you put AI into production at six to eight Dutch organisations. At a product company you do that once. That is the trade: you give up the calm of one codebase and you get the number of reps in return.
The role in short
- Role
- AI Automation Engineer
- Where
- Amsterdam and on site
- Contract
- Permanent, 40 hours
- Salary
- € 55.000 to € 72.000
Who you sit down with
Four finished engagements, with the client named and the number attached. You can check them on our case pages.
SIG Benelux
Wholesaler, interior construction
3% of orders carry an article number, 47% only a description, the rest arrives as a WhatsApp message or a photo.
73%
Order mails become a draft order on their own
Movir
Insurer, 400+ employees
The question was not whether, but how. Where do you start, and how do you get 400 people working with it?
3 to 4×
Faster marketing work
Euphoria Mobility
Mobility, 60+ employees
The team ranged from curious to sceptical. The CTO did not want months of strategy, he wanted proof.
3
Applications into production
Reditus
Affiliate marketing for SaaS
The engineering team had no bandwidth. Finding affiliates by hand cost 16 hours per client.
32×
Faster affiliate sourcing
Your first engagement becomes one of these. You design it, build it and deliver it, and you stand in front of that client's leadership yourself.
Where you stand twelve months in
This is what we measure, and nothing else.
- 01
You have carried two engagements entirely on your own, with nobody looking over your shoulder.
- 02
At least one of them extended or grew.
- 03
The AI lead at your first client now builds without you.
Every six months you sit down about where you stand and what the next step takes. Those three points are the conversation. There is no fourth list.
What the work is
A workflow that is right 80 percent of the time is a demo, not a tool.
The difference sits in concrete examples of good work, evaluation criteria, a check a human looks at, and an owner who keeps it current. That last twenty percent is the craft.
- Workflows that take over a real process, running on the client's own data, systems and processes. Human in the loop is the starting point, autonomy grows with trust.
- The data work up front. Is the data there, is it current, is it clean? A folder with 10,000 unsorted PDFs is not a dataset.
- Work beyond chat: agents, MCP, briefing skills, Claude Code as a CLI or agent.
- Maintenance, which counts as heavily here as building. Models get updates, processes shift, edge cases show up. A workflow without an owner decays within three months.
Which languages and frameworks you use is not fixed and is up to you. Which AI tools and accounts you use is not: we assign those, because client data has to stay inside them. What you make belongs to SPAIK. And that is why, in the conversation, we do not ask which tools you know but when you deliberately do not reach for an agent and how you verify what comes out.
Show, share, hand over
The goal is that the client no longer needs you. That is not a nice sentence, it is the assignment and it is in the proposal. You do not build alone: the team at the client holds three roles.
That is you
The builder
You design it, build it and deliver it.
From the client
The process expert
Knows the work inside out. Without the process expert you build the wrong things.
From the client
The change lead
Brings colleagues along, so the thing actually gets used.
Monday
Everyone in the office. Walk through the week, work out what is stuck somewhere, and show each other what works.
Afternoon for the work that does not need a client in the room.
Tuesday
On site. Backlog with the AI lead, and a look at what broke in what is already running.
Interviews with three domain experts. Not the process documentation, but how the work actually goes.
Wednesday
Building the automation that has to go live this sprint.
The AI lead builds their second automation. You sit next to them and keep your hands off the keyboard.
Thursday
Demo. Every two weeks you show what runs, to the people who will use it tomorrow.
Feedback straight into the build, while everyone still has it fresh.
Friday
One Friday a month is build day: no client, just building and learning. The other Fridays are for your backlog and the week ahead.
- Handover is a deliverable, not a last day. An enablement kit and a full handover are part of the job.
Two values, and what they cost you
Evidence, not promises.
We show that something works before we talk about it. What it costs you: your claim does not count until you have shown it, even when you are right.
Honesty is care.
Hard on the substance, soft on the person. What it costs you: you get bad news immediately, including at a bad moment, and you get feedback with you in the room rather than afterwards through someone else.
Who this is not for
- If you want to build one product in a team of six with a product manager between you and the user, this is not it.
- If you want to build without client contact, this is not it. You spend two to three days a week with people whose work changes because of what you make.
- If giving away something you built, maintenance included, sits badly with you, this gets uncomfortable. That is the core of the assignment.
- If you want a place where the frameworks are already set: they are not. We are eleven people and we write it down as we go.
What it pays, and the rest
€ 55.000 to € 72.000
Gross per year at 40 hours, holiday pay included. That is the band for carrying an engagement on your own. Where you start in it depends on what you bring.
- Permanent contract, 40 hours. Hybrid: office in Amsterdam, client or home. Results count for more than attendance.
- Every AI tool you need: Claude Max, ChatGPT Pro, and more when the work calls for it. A MacBook Pro with a second screen.
- Necessary training is on us. It counts as working time and carries no repayment obligation.
- Occasional extra hours come with the job and are not paid separately. Structural overtime is a conversation.
What happens next
- 01
You hear back within five working days.
- 02
A conversation with Jochem about the work.
- 03
A conversation where you show what you have built.
One role, and Jochem reads it himself
Mail him what you have built. A link to something that runs says more than a CV. This vacancy is real: one seat, one team of eleven, and you speak to the founder. The role is open until 1 November.