Staff Engineer

Valsea Technology

9d•Hybrid

About The Position

Valsea is seeking a Staff-level engineer to lead AI adoption within their mature, high-scale platform. This role involves understanding where AI can provide genuine value, leading engineering efforts, and being a senior technical voice. The focus is on building and setting technical direction, with a strong emphasis on production reliability, data quality, and security. The engineer will architect and deliver AI-powered capabilities, set roadmaps for AI in QA and support, and integrate AI tooling into the SDLC. They will evaluate and integrate LLM and ML infrastructure, set standards for AI feature development, and partner with leadership to identify and deliver AI-driven value. The role also includes mentoring engineers and staying hands-on with coding and problem-solving.

Requirements

5+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time in the JVM/Scala ecosystem (or a comparably strong background in a statically-typed, distributed-systems-heavy language).
Proven Staff/Principal-level scope: setting technical direction, not just executing it.
Hands-on experience shipping AI/ML-powered features into production at real scale, with real users: LLM integration, recommendation systems, applied ML, or agentic infrastructure.
Deep comfort with event-driven, distributed architectures (Akka/Pekko, Kafka or equivalent).
Strong, hands-on experience with distributed systems and container orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, and the operational patterns that come with running them at scale.
A track record of making sound build-vs-buy and platform decisions, including around cost, latency, data privacy, and vendor risk for AI systems specifically.
Product-minded: you think in terms of player impact and business outcomes, not just technical elegance.
A strong communicator who can move fluidly between a whiteboard architecture discussion with engineers and a plain-language case for leadership.
You thrive in ambiguity: this role starts with a mandate, not a spec, and you'll help write the spec.
Proficiency in professional-level English communication, written and verbal.

Nice To Haves

Good domain knowledge of entertainment or another regulated, high-throughput consumer platform.
Experience with CRM and marketing automation platforms.
Background running or scaling self-hosted AI/LLM infrastructure and observability.
Exposure to fraud detection, risk scoring, or trust & safety systems.
Experience introducing AI tooling into an engineering organization's own workflows (dev tooling, code review, incident response), not just into the product.
Modern MLOps/LLMOps practices and tooling.

Responsibilities

Own the technical strategy and roadmap for AI adoption across Valsea's product, platform, and internal tooling.
Architect and lead the delivery of AI-powered capabilities into our Scala/Go/Kafka backend.
Set the vision and roadmap for agentic QA automation and for AI-accelerated support and incident response.
Introduce AI tooling at the root of our SDLC pipelines.
Evaluate and integrate LLM and ML infrastructure, making pragmatic build-vs-buy calls.
Set Product Development standards for how AI features get designed, tested, monitored, and rolled back.
Partner directly with Engineering leadership, Product, and Data to identify where AI creates real player or business value, and turn that into a delivery plan.
Act as a technical multiplier: mentor senior and mid-level engineers and managers, run design reviews, and raise the technical bar for how the wider team thinks about AI-assisted and AI-driven systems.
Stay hands-on: prototype fast, get into the codebase, and unblock hard integration and performance problems yourself when it matters.

Benefits

Hybrid working model from our office in Marbella (3 days/week) or fully remote (EU)
Innovative international company that uses cutting-edge tech equipment
Collaborative teams and agile multicultural environment
Competitive salary with flexible working hours
23 paid vacation days + public holidays
Private health insurance for you and your family
Free Online English/Spanish lessons
Corporate events throughout the year
Ongoing learning and professional development opportunities
In-office perks such as: Daily breakfast and freshly cooked lunch 3 days a week
50% discount on personal training sessions and physiotherapy sessions
Games room, full kitchen with hot drinks, fruit, soft drinks
Gym, massage room and much more