Senior AI Application Software Engineer (For Independent Contractors)

at Booking.com

📍 Amsterdam, Netherlands

EUR 60-130 per hour

SENIOR

✅ Hybrid ✅ On-site

✅ Contract / Freelance

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

AI @ 4 API @ 4 CI/CD @ 7 Change Management @ 4 ChatGPT @ 4 Claude Code @ 4 Codex @ 4 Data Engineering @ 6 Data Science @ 6 GenAI @ 4 JavaScript @ 7 Jira @ 6 LLM @ 4 Machine Learning @ 6 Observability @ 4 Python @ 7 RAG @ 4 Security @ 7 Slack @ 6 TypeScript @ 7

Details

At Booking.com, the CBO Office supports strategic and operational execution across the Chief Business Officer organisation, working across CBO departments and corporate functions. It brings together Business Operations, Change Management and Program Management to help the organisation prioritise, plan and govern major initiatives, enable business change and improve cross-functional delivery.

The role focuses on architecting and developing AI-powered, agentic solutions across these three disciplines. The ambition is to evolve existing AI use cases and early solutions into a coherent and scalable product ecosystem, identifying common technical capabilities that can be reused across workflows while supporting the specific needs of each craft.

This is primarily an AI application and architecture role, not an ML research role. The focus is on applying existing AI models and enterprise platforms to real business workflows rather than training foundation models.

Responsibilities

Architect, build and productionise AI-powered applications, agents and multi-agent workflows.
Translate business needs and product requirements into technical designs, prototypes and production-ready solutions.
Identify and build reusable capabilities and common patterns across use cases and crafts.
Design agent orchestration, retrieval and grounding, context and state management, tool calling and MCP-based integrations.
Integrate solutions with relevant enterprise knowledge, data and systems through approved APIs and platforms.
Implement appropriate evaluation, observability, guardrails, access controls and human-in-the-loop mechanisms.
Own solutions end-to-end, including code quality, testing, security, deployment, monitoring, reliability and documentation.
Rapidly prototype and evaluate technologies and architectures to validate feasibility and inform technical decisions.
Work with Booking.com technology, platform and security teams to align with enterprise standards and avoid isolated solutions.
Contribute to the technical roadmap and operating model required to maintain, support and scale the solutions.
Apply software-system design and architectural guidance, including evaluating architecture against business and technology requirements and designing for future evolution.
Work closely with the Product Manager, programme lead, domain experts and Booking.com technology teams to translate product requirements into technical designs and working solutions.

Requirements

Minimum 5 years of professional experience as a Software Engineer, ideally in backend, full-stack, application or platform engineering.
Strong software architecture and system-design experience.
Hands-on experience building GenAI and agentic applications, ideally in production.
Practical experience with AI agents and orchestration, preferably including multi-agent systems.
Experience with OpenAI/ChatGPT, Anthropic/Claude or comparable LLM platforms.
Experience with MCP/tool calling, APIs and enterprise system integrations.
Experience with RAG, retrieval, grounding, context engineering and state/memory management.
Experience with AI evaluation, observability, guardrails and human-in-the-loop patterns.
Strong application-development experience, ideally with Python and/or TypeScript/JavaScript.
Strong software-engineering fundamentals, including testing, APIs, security, CI/CD, monitoring, version control and production operations.
Experience taking solutions from prototype or proof of concept to reliable, maintainable production software.
Ability to work effectively with Product Managers, business stakeholders, domain experts and technical teams.
Experience designing multi-agent or agent-as-tool architectures is desirable.
Experience with Claude Code, Codex or comparable agentic development tools is desirable.
Experience with enterprise knowledge/search and productivity systems, including Jira, Confluence, Google Workspace and Slack, is desirable.
Experience with Project/Program Management, Change Management or Business Operations workflows is desirable.
Experience building AI solutions that can take actions in external systems, including appropriate permission and approval controls, is desirable.
Experience in large-scale, privacy-sensitive or regulated enterprise environments is desirable.

The role requires a strong Software Engineer and architect who can apply existing AI capabilities to real enterprise workflows, integrate them with enterprise systems and take them into secure, reliable and maintainable production. It is not primarily a Data Engineering, Data Science or Machine Learning research role.