Senior AI Research Engineer

Adyen is building a top-tier AI engineering organization in Amsterdam, San Francisco and Madrid to drive its next chapter of innovation using AI globally across the company. This is a highly technical, hands-on role focused on the exploration and application of cutting-edge AI research within the financial technology sector. As a Senior AI Research Engineer, you will operate with a high degree of autonomy and responsibility, delivering strategic, high-impact outcomes that bridge the gap between advanced AI research and production-grade applications at a global scale, potentially impacting trillions of dollars in transactions annually.

This is Adyen

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft. For its teams, Adyen creates an environment with opportunities for people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. The company tackles unique technical challenges at scale and solves them as a team, delivering innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.

The Opportunity

• Drive the execution of Adyen's AI strategy, focusing on the practical application of Generative AI (GenAI) and other AI methodologies in finance.
• Contribute to key research areas such as AI agents for data analysis and operational workflows, human-in-the-loop for integrity risk, and development of foundation models.
• Bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI research and production by implementing research papers into robust, scalable, production-ready code.
• Reduce complexity and dependencies across teams by championing engineering and scientific alignment and setting high quality standards.
• Contribute to defining the long-term vision for AI at Adyen, including how AI will interact with humans and finance, including consumers, merchants, and financial institutions.
• Understand regulation and advocate for safe innovation in the field.
• Drive innovation by challenging the status quo, introducing transformative ideas, and implementing creative solutions to solve real-world problems.
• Carry out flexible, value-driven assignments, proactively unblocking teams to maximize organizational impact and drive strategic initiatives.
• Provide mentorship and horizontal sponsorship across the organization, fostering collaboration, sharing knowledge and best practices, and cultivating a culture of continuous improvement.
• Actively pair with other engineering teams to solve deep-rooted technical challenges and be fully capable of being hands-on with the code, whether creating proof-of-concepts or fixing critical performance issues.
• Connect with the broader AI community, including startups, VCs, and AI labs, to stay informed of the latest advancements and identify potential partnership opportunities.

Who You Are

• Deeply embedded in the scientific AI research community with a strong understanding of the latest state-of-the-art advancements.
• Significant experience and a strong understanding of Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs).
• A strong engineering mindset with a track record of writing clean, efficient, and scalable code suitable for production environments.
• Demonstrated experience taking cutting-edge AI research papers and implementing them into production-quality code.
• The ability to think critically and deliver simple and elegant solutions to complex, cross-team problems, influencing strategic direction and fostering innovation across the organization.
• Excellent at translating complex technical concepts into clear, understandable terms for diverse audiences, including engineers, executives, and during public events.
• Strong collaboration skills built through empathy, influence, negotiation, relationship building, and conflict resolution.

Nice to Haves

• A strong product sense and the ability to identify impactful AI use cases.
• Experience in AI-enabled fintech companies.
• Familiarity with classical machine learning concepts.
• Experience with external visibility activities such as conferences and publications.
• Experience working with on-premise infrastructure.

Why Adyen?

This is an exceptional opportunity to join a solid, established company with a startup mindset, characterized by small teams, direct communication, and work on important challenges. You’ll have direct access to massive global datasets, such as payments and identity data, and the ability to see your team's work have an immediate impact at scale. Adyen offers an environment of ownership and speed, where a focused research team can make a significant difference. You will be at the forefront of bridging AI and fintech, shaping how these two critical areas intersect.

This role is based out of Adyen’s Amsterdam office. Adyen is an office-first company and values in-person collaboration; it does not offer remote-only roles.