Distinguished Engineer (AI-Native Engineering)

Description

At SQUER, we help established companies become AI-native engineering organizations. As Distinguished Engineer, AI-Native Engineering, you set the technical direction for that work, and you build the proof yourself. This is our most senior individual contributor role. It exists because the interesting questions in AI-native delivery don't have answers yet, and someone has to go find them, then convince a room full of skeptical enterprise architects that the answer holds. You spend part of your time in front of CTOs and on conference stages, and part of it in a terminal finding out whether the thing you're about to recommend actually works.

Your tasks

• Set the technical direction for AI-native delivery at SQUER: the practices, the reference architectures, the guardrails, the definition of done for agent output. Not as a document nobody reads, but as something our teams actually use.
• Build what doesn't exist yet. Prototype the pipelines, agents, and internal tooling that our clients will ask for in two years, and be honest about what fails.
• Act as technical counterpart to CTOs, principal engineers, and account leads at our strategic accounts. You go where the conversation is stuck, not where the ticket is.Take the uncomfortable positions publicly, and back them with evidence: what AI actually changes about platform strategy, where agentic delivery breaks, what enterprise governance has to look like when code writes itself.
• Drive SQUER's own AI enablement: learning paths, internal dogfooding, and the engineering practices behind our AI fluency, across more than a hundred engineers.
• Evaluate models, tools, and agent frameworks, and decide with the TechOffice what we bet on. Own the technical side of our partner relationships and certifications.
• Represent SQUER where it counts: keynotes, publications, our own conference and meetup formats, and the technical hard parts of pitches and RFPs.
• Grow our Leads and Principals through coaching and pairing. Your impact is measured by what the organisation can do, not by what you shipped alone.

Your qualifications

• Deep hands-on practice with agentic engineering: coding agents, spec-driven development, MCP, orchestration, evaluation. You have your own workflows, and you can explain in detail where they fail.
• You have taken AI-assisted delivery from experiment to something a team relies on daily, in a real organisation with real constraints.
• Genuine architecture depth beyond AI: distributed systems, event-driven design, platform engineering, CI/CD. AI-native delivery falls apart without it.
• You can hold your own in a strategy discussion with a CIO in the morning and pair with an engineer on a legacy codebase in the afternoon, and both sides take you seriously.
• Public track record is benefitial: conference talks, writing, open source, community work. You are comfortable defending a position in front of an audience that came to disagree.
• You infect people with enthusiasm without overselling. You can say "this doesn't work yet" to a client who wants to hear the opposite.
• Enterprise reality is not new to you: regulated environments, legacy landscapes, organisations where change is slow and political.

Your Benefits

Why You'll Love Working at SQUER:

• Ownership & Responsibility: at SQUER, we believe in empowering our team. In our flat hierarchies, your ideas and actions matter more than titles. Take the reins, make an impact and grow with us.
• Learn & Grow: Tap into a € 5.000 annual training budget to sharpen your skills and take advantage of our in-house Leadership Academy. Join and be part of our active tech community through meetups, hackathons and training sessions. Get up to 40h/year additional time off for your personal education.
• Exciting Challenges & Real Impact: Dive into diverse projects where your work truly makes a difference – for our clients and for SQUER.
• Flexibility for Performance: Benefit from hybrid work options, flexible hours, workations within the EU, and additional vacation days – giving you the freedom to perform at your best.
• Tailored Tools for Success: Choose your preferred hardware configuration and leverage our suite of AI tools and licenses (Anthropic, OpenAI, and more) to suit your working style.
• We Value You: Beyond perks and benefits, we offer a competitive annual salary to recognize your exceptional contributions.
• Be Part of a Thriving Team Culture: At SQUER, collaboration and connection are at the heart of what we do. Through open communication, shared successes, and meaningful team events – including our annual SQUER offsite – we cultivate a culture where everyone feels valued and inspired to grow together.
• A Perks-Packed Workplace: Work in a central office with a spacious terrace and BBQ, enjoy free lunch in the office, MyClubs sports membership, and either a free “Wiener Linien” ticket or a partial contribution to the “Klimaticket”. Plus, benefit from free massages, referral bonuses, Corporate Benefits, and JobRad. Annual employee presents and a monthly team breakfast add extra value to your work experience.

We believe in transparent and fair compensation. For this role, the annual gross salary ranges between € 75.000 and € 95.000 – the exact placement depends on the seniority level we assess together during the process.

About us

We are dedicated to creating a supportive workplace where everyone can thrive and be proud to be part of the team. We encourage our colleagues to ask questions, try new things, pursue ongoing professional development, and take calculated risks.

Are you ready to learn and collaborate in independent agile teams? We are looking forward to meeting you.