As digital transformation reshapes daily work, organisations need dependable technology partners. BIT offers a structure with defined responsibilities to support the efficiency and effectiveness of IT activities and provide consistent business services while fostering a workplace where staff contributions are acknowledged and valued.

At the European Patent Office (EPO), we are undergoing a major transformation to build a DevOps practice, embed agile principles, adopt green technologies and use artificial intelligence. Our mission is to support innovation, competitiveness and economic growth across Europe. We take innovation seriously and are fully committed to our digital transformation.

The EPO's Strategic Plan 2028 reinforces our commitment to sustainability by engaging and empowering our workforce through modern HR practices. The strategy focuses on attracting and developing talent, supporting mobility and flexibility, providing engaging workspaces and ensuring the EPO remains a leading institution in the intellectual property field.

We are now looking for highly motivated and experienced experts able to work independently and bring state-of-the-art knowledge to support our drive to become an AI-native organisation, transforming Corporate IT with state-of-the-art generative AI and intelligent tools. In this role, you'll bridge the gap between business needs and technical capabilities, architecting scalable AI systems that deliver measurable business value while guiding technical teams through complex AI implementations.

Join us as an AI Solutions Architect for Corporate IT and shape the future of how we work.

With us you will:

• take the lead on AI technologies by continuously scouting emerging tools and trends
• identify high‑impact, high‑value AI use cases aligned with business and IT priorities
• drive AI initiatives in close collaboration with senior IT management and product teams
• own the hands‑on design of AI‑ and cloud‑first solutions from concept to delivery
• manage implementation and production roll-out, ensuring scalability and reliability
• ensure seamless integration of solutions into the EPO IT landscape
• enforce corporate standards, architecture principles and AI best practices
• mentor teams, support technical hiring and actively raise AI awareness across BIT to strengthen capability and culture

Apply if you have:

• expertise in modern cloud/cloud-native architectures and a proven track record delivering production-grade AI/ML solutions (deep learning, generative AI) that solve real business problems
• hands-on experience designing scalable, production-ready AI systems and leading greenfield builds, migrations and full end-to-end roll-outs
• a strong hands-on delivery background with five or more years of technical leadership across complete solution life cycles (architecture → production → maintenance)
• exceptional ability to communicate complex AI topics clearly to engineers, product teams and senior IT management (C-level stakeholders)
• demonstrated leadership and people skills: mentoring, coaching, stakeholder management, guiding technical teams, driving multiple strategic initiatives autonomously
• strong analytical problem-solver capabilities, excellent composure and the skills for decision-making under pressure and ambiguity
• deep, up-to-date, hands-on knowledge of:
  • designing and deploying AI-first architectures and secure API integrations across multi-cloud solutions (especially Microsoft Azure's AI ecosystem)
  • evaluating and selecting LLMs based on accuracy, latency and cost, while spotting high-ROI use cases in Corporate IT (productivity, collaboration, automation)
  • agentic AI, skills and the model context protocol (MCP) for secure, standardised connections between AI agents and enterprise systems/tools

• Additional nice-to-haves:

• advanced techniques: model distillation, federated learning, autonomous agents or multi‑agent systems
• experience with AI ethics, governance, bias detection and responsible‑AI practices for high‑compliance environments
• hands‑on skills with vector databases and RAG pipelines across enterprise data

Our minimum requirements for this post

• Diploma of completed studies at master's level or – in exceptional cases – equivalent professional experience
• Generally, an excellent knowledge (at least C1) of one official language (English, French and German) and ability to understand the other two; alternatively, excellent knowledge (at least C1) of at least one official language (in such cases, the willingness to learn the missing language(s) and to reach level B2 within a set time frame would be required)
• Citizenship of one of the member states of the European Patent Organisation

Process

Candidates are kindly asked to upload an updated CV and outline their motivation in the designated application field (character limit 4000). If so wished, the motivation letter can also be uploaded as a Word or pdf attachment under "Application document" in SuccessFactors. In this case, please indicate in the designated field "Please refer to attached motivation letter".

The successful candidate will be selected on the basis of qualifications, competencies, professional experience and language knowledge, supplemented as appropriate by interviews, tests and/or a personality questionnaire.

A reserve list may be constituted, should more candidates than required at this time be considered suitable following the selection procedure. Such reserve lists are valid for 18 months and reserve list candidates may be contacted, should a vacancy with substantially the same profile arise during that period.

More information on how we recruit can be found on our EPO jobs and careers site.

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Key information

Job group: 4

Grade: G7 to G10 (net (basic) monthly salary* for this vacancy: EUR 6 375 to 10 164, depending on experience and location)

Duration of appointment: Five years, with the possibility of extension

Career path: Technical

Location: Office-wide

Application deadline: 15 April 2026

Interviews planned for: first half of May 2026

* after deduction of EPO-internal tax and before deduction of staff contributions to the social security and pension schemes.