At Marktplaats, data is at the heart of everything we do, but Intelligence is what differentiates us. We are building the ML/AI Platform that powers innovation across our entire Product & Technology landscape.

You will join the Data Platform team—the engineering engine behind our Data & Analytics crew. You are stepping into a unique, hybrid ecosystem: we maintain a robust, high-scale traditional ML environment used daily by teams across Marktplaats, while simultaneously acting as the architects for our emerging GenAI capabilities. We are a team that values engineering rigor just as much as experimentation, looking for a leader to help us bridge the gap between stable production services and the bleeding edge of AI.

As a Senior Staff Data Engineer - ML & AI Platform, you will be the bridge between infrastructure and Data Science, ensuring that our ML/AI environment is robust, scalable, and developer-friendly. Your mission is to solve the "last mile" problem of ML: making it easy to move models from a notebook to a high-scale production API.

You are an R&D-minded leader who loves to experiment with the latest features (e.g., Databricks Agents, RAG Studio) and operationalize them into stable platform features. You will empower AI/ML Engineers and Data Scientists to be autonomous by building the tooling they need to self-serve.

• Platform Leadership: Lead the evolution of our Machine Learning & AI Platform, designing the architecture for AI Agents and establishing patterns for Vector Databases.

• Operationalize Innovation: Act as a "first mover." When Databricks releases a new feature (e.g., Liquid Clustering, Agent Evaluation), you validate it and integrate it into the platform.

• GenAI Governance: Write the guidelines for GenAI development, helping teams transition from "notebook experiments" to production-grade LLM applications.

• Enablement: Design the Feature Store, manage the Model Registry, and set up the infrastructure for Vector Search and RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) workflows.

• Mentorship: Elevate the technical bar of the team, mentoring Staff and Senior engineers on design patterns, code quality, and architectural decisions.

• Translation: Translate complex requirements from ML Engineers and Data Scientists into robust engineering tickets and infrastructure roadmaps.

• Databricks AI Stack: MLflow, Mosaic AI, Unity Catalog, Feature Store, Databricks Model Serving, Vector Databases.

• Big Data & Compute: Apache Spark (Internals & Optimization), AWS (GPU instances, EC2).

• GenAI & Agents: Databricks Agent tools.

• Languages: Python (Expert level), PyTorch.

• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Terragrunt.

• Containerization: Docker, Kubernetes.

• CI/CD: GitHub Actions.

• Observability: Datadog.

• Experience: 10+ years of experience with a specific focus on the intersection of Data Engineering, MLOps, and AI Infrastructure.

• Spark Mastery: You don't just run jobs; you optimize them. You possess deep knowledge of Spark internals, structured streaming, and performance tuning for large-scale data processing.

• MLOps Authority: Proven experience architecting end-to-end ML platforms for Traditional ML (Classic MLOps) while actively enabling the organization on Generative AI concepts.

• DevOps Mindset: You treat infrastructure as software. You have a strong background in building automated pipelines and ensuring system observability.

• GenAI Readiness: Practical experience building infrastructure for Large Language Models, including managing the complexity of chaining models and tools.

• Serving Expertise: Solid experience serving models at low latency and high concurrency using containerized solutions.

• Collaborative Spirit: You speak the language of AI/ML Engineers and can effectively bridge the gap between "experimental code" and "production systems."

Benefits
Life at Marktplaats comes with its perks! Our colleagues enjoy the following benefits:
* 💸 Attractive Base Salary
* 🏆 Participation in our Short-Term Incentive Plan (Annual Bonus)
* ❤️ Employee Assistance Program: 24/7 support for you and your family
* 🌱 Collaborative Culture: “Win together, lose together” is one of our key behaviours. You’ll be part of a supportive, growth-minded environment.


Ask our recruiters to tell you more! ✨
Equal Opportunity Statement
Marktplaats is an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status.
If you feel you don’t meet all of the listed requirements but are still excited about this role, we encourage you to apply anyway! Research shows that candidates from underrepresented groups sometimes self-select out, we’re interested in your potential as much as your experience.