Tech Lead (Machine Learning)

In a nutshell

Picnic is turning online grocery shopping from a digital catalogue into an intelligent, personal experience. The Consumer ML team is at the heart of that — building the systems behind personalised recommendations, semantic search, promotional pricing, and fraud detection. Picnic’s ML teams own projects end-to-end, from initial ideation and experimentation all the way to running in production for millions of customers.

As Tech Lead (Machine Learning), you'll lead a team of ML Engineers through its next growth phase. You'll develop the people, set direction across the team's ML domains, and shape our customers' experience with AI & ML. You'll partner with Senior Engineers on technical architecture and Product Owners on business priorities — your focus is building the team.

We don’t hide what we do. Instead, we open-source with the community that helped us grow.

Tricks of the trade

• Grow your team: coaching experienced engineers toward technical leadership and helping junior engineers build independence. Your success is measured by theirs.
• Shape how the team works: how we run experiments, evaluate models, and ship to production. You define the process, not every solution.
• Partner with cross-functional teams, including senior leadership, across product, analytics, and business, to understand user needs and translate them into technical solutions.
• Be a technical leader by challenging architectural decisions, asking the right questions, and spotting connections between initiatives.
• Shape the vision and roadmap for ML to improve our customers’ experience together with the Product Owner, set and maintain high standards for execution.
• Help the team build confidence in its technical choices by fostering a culture of innovation and contributing to the ML community - through conferences, meetups, and knowledge exchanges

We’re looking for

• You have a degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, or a related field.
• You have at least 5 years of relevant technical experience, including building and shipping AI/ML product features, with a strong understanding of modern ML techniques — enough to challenge architecture and know what good looks like.
• You have at least 2 years of experience leading or managing a technical team, with a track record of growing engineers into stronger, more independent contributors.
• You've shaped how an ML team works — not just what it works on.
• You communicate clearly with technical and non-technical audiences, and you're comfortable representing your team externally.
• You have strong English skills (no Dutch required).

Picnic Perks

💡 Make a difference

You’ll work in an awesome startup environment with the freedom to drive your own projects and create a visible impact.

Our fully electric vehicles and sustainable business model mean you’ll also be contributing to making the world a better place!

🫱🏼‍🫲🏾 Teamwork makes the dream work

With more than 80 nationalities across 3 countries, you’ll be part of a diverse company with plenty of cool stuff to get involved with, from board game evenings to after-work drinks to our company ski trip and more!

🍎 You are what you eat

You’ll get freshly prepared, healthy lunches and snacks (with plenty of vegetarian, vegan, and halal options). Coffee snob? Don’t worry, our amazing Picnic barista has you covered.

🚴🏽 Stay healthy

Mental health is important. As well as having the option to speak with Picnic colleagues who act as confidential advisors, our collaboration with OpenUp gives you easy access to professional psychologists, along with workshops and materials.

There are plenty of sports communities and events to get involved with, from tennis to yoga, to climbing!

🔋 Attractive package

We offer competitive compensation and a pension plan that looks out for your future self, as well as 25 vacation days per year, so you can recharge your batteries.

🌍 Benefits for expats

It can be daunting starting a new job AND moving to a new country. That’s why we offer lots of support for our many expat colleagues.