For our client, an internationally renowned European retail and consumer goods brand, we are recruiting a Data & AI Engineering Lead to establish and lead their brand-new Data & AI delivery unit in Bucharest, Romania.

In this role, you will report directly to the GenAI & Agentic AI team in Germany and serve as the founding leader of the Romanian technology hub by combining disciplinary and professional leadership with technical depth, business acumen, and hands-on delivery. You will work as an integral part of an established international organization spanning Data Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning, Marketing Analytics, Customer Intelligence, and Data Warehousing, taking end-to-end ownership of strategic projects while scaling local capabilities.

Candidate Profile

• Around 8 years of solid experience in leading technical teams, delivery teams, or engineering organizations;

• Proven track record in building, developing, coaching, and mentoring a new team or organizational unit from the ground up;

• Demonstrated experience in both disciplinary and professional people leadership;

• Strong technical background across Data Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning, Data Warehousing, Data Architecture, and Platform Engineering;

• Hands-on expertise with modern cloud platforms (particularly Google Cloud Platform), open-source technologies, streaming, and distributed data processing;

• Strong software engineering foundation, including proficiency in Python, SQL, modern APIs, containerization, orchestration, and CI/CD pipelines;

• In-depth experience with Generative AI, Agentic AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), RAG architectures, AI agents, and MCP server integrations (must-have);

• Proven experience in production deployment, monitoring, security, and operational ownership of AI and data solutions integrated with business applications;

• Solid business acumen: ability to connect technical decisions with customer value and tangible outcomes across functions like Marketing, Online, Customer Intelligence, and IT;

• Experience delivering complex initiatives in agile or structured delivery environments, with comfort in taking ownership in ambiguous or evolving contexts;

• A balance of strategic vision and a hands-on mindset, being willing to write code, review architectures, solve technical blockers, and guide the team directly;

• Collaborative leadership style combined with decisiveness, accountability, and confidence in working across locations, cultures, and organizational boundaries;

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical business stakeholders;

• German language proficiency is considered a plus, but is not mandatory.

Key Responsibilities

• Establishing and growing the local Data & AI delivery unit, providing direct disciplinary and professional leadership to an initial team of 5 to 6 specialists;

• Creating a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing engineering culture while mentoring team members to take independent ownership of deliverables;

• Supporting end-to-end recruitment, onboarding, continuous professional development, and performance management for the local team;

• Acting as the primary point of contact for technology, project execution, and people-related topics in Romania, closely coordinating with the international data organization;

• Driving end-to-end delivery of Data Engineering, Generative AI, and Agentic AI projects from initial idea, requirements gathering, and architecture to production deployment;

• Ensuring project delivery aligns with established quality standards, transparency, governance, and architectural frameworks;

• Leading Proof-of-Concept (PoC) studies and applied research initiatives in close alignment with global teams;

• Assuming full operational responsibility for production Data & AI systems, including monitoring, maintenance, incident response, platform security, and continuous improvements;

• Actively shaping the technology landscape across modern data platforms, data warehousing, scalable platform services, APIs, data products, MCP server integrations, and intelligent business applications;

• Maintaining hands-on involvement by reviewing system architectures, setting technical direction, coding, and solving operational challenges when needed;

• Representing the unit at industry events, tech conferences, and recruiting fairs across Romania to actively position the client as an employer of choice in the Data & AI community.

Only eligible candidates will be contacted within a maximum of 3 weeks. All information will be treated as strictly confidential.

HRS Romania is a workforce management solutions hub, home to Senior HR Consultants who always act as business improvement architects. Start-ups or corporations - we house all HR can offer under one roof, for businesses of any size.

Moving forward is impossible without the initial drive to do things differently and get results, not only words: our solutions' portfolio, flexibility and exceptional customer service enable us to build long-lasting relationships that delight our business partners. It’s safe to say we know our ways around the HR business and we can prove that we do our job better than most.

We foster a work environment based on respect, honesty and professional growth and we always strive to positively impact the communities we live, play, and do business in. People are the key element in our identity: we all love what we do & we want to do more of it.

We’re exactly what you see. Only now - bigger. And the best part is we bring new opportunities wherever we go.