AI & Innovation Senior Engineer

Here at The Exploration Company, we are developing, producing, and operating Nyx, a modular and reusable space orbital vehicle that can eventually be refuelled in orbit and that can carry cargo - and potentially humans in the longer run. We want you as a talented AI & Innovation Senior Engineer to help us in our mission by identifying the high-leverage opportunities where digital innovation and artificial intelligence can optimise both engineering workflows and business-process operations, developing prototypes and proof-of-concepts, architecting production-ready solutions, and owning the implementation of these solutions across our existing tools (including in-house applications, our ERP system Odoo, engineering tool-chains, and more). KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Your responsibilities will evolve with the company and the rapidly changing AI landscape, but will typically include: - Identify and prioritize high-leverage opportunities for automation, AI-enabled workflows, and intelligent operational systems across internal domains (such as engineering, manufacturing, logistics, finance, and business operations) with a focus on accelerating execution and improving operational quality. - Rapidly design, build, test, and iterate prototypes that demonstrate measurable operational value, ranging from workflow automation and operational tooling to AI-native systems. - Architect production-ready solutions that integrate into existing operational environments, including Odoo ERP, engineering toolchains, internal developer platforms, and business systems. - Define scalable system architectures, integration patterns, data flows, orchestration logic, monitoring concepts, security considerations, and maintainability strategies that allow solutions to move beyond isolated demos into long-term operational use. - Own the implementation journey from prototype to production: collaborate with engineering and DevOps teams to deploy, operationalize, and continuously improve solutions within real operational workflows. - Work closely with engineering leads, business stakeholders, IT, and data teams to define success metrics, validate business impact, and ensure solutions create measurable improvements in efficiency, quality, scalability, or execution speed. - Continuously evaluate emerging technologies, vendor solutions, frameworks, and platforms - both commercial and open-source - and determine where they can create meaningful operational leverage in a deep-tech environment. - Ensure responsible implementation of AI-enabled systems by considering governance, security, privacy, explainability, compliance, and operational reliability from the beginning, while supporting teams across the company in adopting AI tooling WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - Extensive professional experience in software engineering, AI/data engineering, automation, or digital product/innovation roles - ideally with multiple years building prototypes and production-ready solutions in complex enterprise or engineering environments. - Proven track record of: - Identifying and delivering AI-enabled solutions that create measurable business or engineering value. - Rapidly prototyping and iterating solutions, while successfully integrating them into production environments. - Designing systems that integrate with ERP platforms, business systems, and engineering toolchains. - Strong technical skills: - Proficiency in programming and familiarity with modern AI/ML frameworks, tooling, and deployment practices. - Experience with data pipelines, model lifecycle management, and deployment/monitoring. - Familiarity with cloud environments (Azure, AWS, GCP) and engineering operations (DevOps, containerization, micro-services). - Strong architectural mindset with the ability to design scalable, reliable, and maintainable systems that move beyond isolated demos into long-term operational use. - Builder mentality: comfortable operating in ambiguous environments, exploring emerging technologies, rapidly buil