AI & Technology Solutions Lead

B Futurist moves quickly on technology. We work with external partners to improve how we operate, we are putting AI to work across the business, and we are now building the technical capability to lead that work ourselves rather than only buy it in.

This is a new role. You would own the technology we build and buy outside our ERP, and make sure the company becomes genuinely good at using AI. You set the technical direction, and the shape of the role is partly yours to define.

At a glance

• Your focus: The technology we build and buy outside our ERP, and how the company uses AI.
• Current stack: Google Workspace, Slack, Odoo and Claude.
• Reports to: Business Operations Team Leader.
• Hybrid: One day working from home per week. Fully remote possible for candidates based outside the Netherlands.
• Shape of the role: roughly a quarter hands-on building, half leading the technical side of partner projects, a quarter enabling the teams.

Who we are

B Futurist moves fragrance, cosmetics and hair care across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. Alongside our trading and distribution business, we run Beautinow, our online niche fragrance retailer.

We are an energetic, international team with a flat structure. We avoid unnecessary hierarchy, speak openly, question established ways of working and give people room to take initiative. If you see a better way, bring it forward. Test your ideas, learn from feedback and share what you discover. Colleagues across Trading, Supply Chain, Warehouse, Finance, People & Culture and Business Operations work closely together. Freedom comes with responsibility for your choices, your work and the people who rely on it.

What you will actually do

• Lead the technical side of partner projects. We build with external partners outside our ERP. You would own our side: shaping what the solution needs to be, reviewing the architecture and the code that comes back, and holding delivery to what was agreed. This is the largest part of the job.
• Bring a critical eye to AI in our ERP. Our Odoo partner runs AI projects inside the system. You would not necessarily write that code, but you would understand the technology well enough to challenge the approach, the data handling and the cost.
• Build small applications that make daily work easier. Internal tools, automations and agents around Odoo, Google Workspace and Slack, working closely with the Odoo Developer. Some you build yourself; some you specify and have someone else build. You decide which is which.
• Decide what we build and what we buy. Technical due diligence on the software we are considering — what is underneath it, what it will cost us over time, and whether building it would serve us better.
• Set how we use AI. You would define the framework: what is allowed, what data can go where, and what gets reviewed before it touches real money or real customers.
• Turn local experiments into something dependable. Colleagues across the company are already experimenting with AI. You would take the good ideas and make them robust, secure and reusable.
• Enable the teams. Around seventy colleagues are learning to work with AI. Helping them do it well is part of the job, not an afterthought.
• Get close to the work. Sit with colleagues in Trading, Supply Chain, Finance, People & Culture and Operations. Follow the handovers, question the workarounds, and agree where an improvement will make a real difference.
• Stay with what you ship. Deploy, monitor, improve and document. Measure the change in manual work, errors and adoption.

Your first months

Understand our systems and how work actually moves through them. Propose the first priorities, and deliver one focused improvement with Business Operations. Take technical ownership of a project already running with an external partner. Use what you learn to shape where we go next. The direction is genuinely yours to propose.

What you bring

• A software engineer first. A strong backend or full-stack background, with applications you personally built, deployed and supported. You would still be hireable as a developer if AI did not exist.
• Strong Python or TypeScript, SQL, API and authentication skills, and practical experience with cloud deployment, Git, automated testing and monitoring.
• Hands-on experience delivering LLM applications with Claude or comparable models: tool calling, retrieval, evaluation, data privacy and reliable operation.
• You have connected systems that were never built to talk to each other. Experience with Google Workspace, Slack or Odoo integrations is a plus, as is experience with agent development frameworks such as Google ADK or the Claude SDK.
• You have run a build with an external partner and held them to it: scope, architecture and cost, not only delivery dates.
• Senior enough to tell a supplier no, and to explain why. This is the part of the role we cannot compromise on.
• You can teach without making people feel stupid, and explain a technical decision in clear English to people who are not technical.
• The judgement to turn an incomplete request into a sensible scope, choose the straightforward solution, and explain your reasoning.

Is this the right role for you?

It suits someone who likes owning a problem end to end and does not need a team around them to do it.

It is a broad role rather than a specialist one. If you want to work on models and research, you would be underused here.

It is a builder’s role before it is an AI role. Reviewing what a partner delivers, and shipping software that has to keep working, both need real engineering behind them.

How we work

You set the technical direction for everything we build and buy outside our ERP. Inside the ERP, our specialist partner holds the final technical call. Your job there is to challenge the approach, test what comes back and make sure we are getting the right thing. Priorities, budget and trade-offs are agreed with the Team Leader, who is accountable for the team's results.

You will work directly with the external partners who build for us — their architects and their developers. They work to a professional engineering standard, and you need to be at a level where they take your review seriously.

Expect direct feedback and changing needs. We value people who experiment, involve colleagues and stay accountable for the outcome. Good ideas can come from anyone.

What you get

• Work worth putting on your CV. Technical ownership of a live build with an external partner. Internal AI applications taken from idea to everyday use. An AI framework you design for a company of seventy. Named projects, not maintenance.
• Real technical authority. You own the technical decisions, not only the recommendations.
• A role you define. This is the first time we are bringing this capability in-house, and the first months are partly yours to shape.
• Annual bonus plan. Participation in our annual bonus plan.
• Time off. 25 days of annual leave, plus your birthday off.
• Pension. Pension premiums fully paid by B Futurist.
• Lunch. Subsidised warm lunches at the office, prepared by our in-house chef.
• Stay active. Subsidised Urban Sports Club membership.
• Your commute. Travel reimbursement.
• Keep developing. Learning and development support, including a budget to agree for your role.
• Friday drinks. Time to catch up with colleagues beyond the day’s work.
• Celebrate together. Team activities and a company Christmas party.
• Visa support. We are a recognised Kennismigrant sponsor; sponsorship options can be discussed during the hiring process.
• And Punk. Our office dog is very much part of the team.
• Close to the business. Room to take ownership, work closely with the founder and colleagues across teams, and see your ideas become part of how we operate.

Hiring Process

Our hiring process has three stages, each lasting up to one hour. We start with a conversation with HR and our Business Operations Team Leader about your experience, something you personally built and the decisions behind it. Next is a technical session where you explain a technical topic to a non-technical audience and discuss your reasoning. We finish with a conversation with the founders about the role, working together and mutual expectations.