Vacancy · Research · PhD-level

AI Engineer

You've built and validated your own models. You know how to take an AI workflow from idea to something that holds up under scrutiny. Perhaps you've got a soft spot for psychology too, or at least a curiosity about the human mind. Now you want to work on something that actually matters.

Rotterdam · hybridFull-timePhD · finished or final stretch€ 4,200 – € 6,500 p/m
Helping 10 million people in mental healthcare to a more accurate diagnosis, by 2030

Our platform already supports mental health professionals with session reports and documentation, and we're growing into diagnostics and treatment. Every week, new care organizations join.

01

What you'll do

Design, build and evaluate the models and LLM workflows behind Insights
Have real input on the research agenda and the methodological choices
Build the evidence: benchmarks, ground truth and validation that hold up in front of clinicians and auditors
Translate clinical questions and feedback from care professionals into research and working prototypes
Work with developers, researchers, care professionals, universities and research institutes
02

What do you bring?

A PhD in AI, machine learning, NLP, computational linguistics, computational psychiatry or comparable (finished or in the final stretch)
Hands-on experience building, orchestrating and validating AI workflows and LLMs
Fluency in Python and a modern ML stack (a clinical psychology or psychiatry background is a plus)
You're entrepreneurial, scientifically sharp and like turning open questions into working solutions
You want to make an impact with technology, preferably in healthcare
03

What we're building

At Ontzorgd we build AI software for mental healthcare: from automatic session reports to a platform that gives clinicians meaningful insight into their clients' progress. Today we save clinicians 3–4 hours of admin time a week; next, we want to help improve the care itself. Think of surfacing blind spots a clinician might miss, sparring on hypotheses about what's driving a client's symptoms, tracking whether a treatment is actually working, or mapping how complaints, risk and protective factors hang together in a network.

04

Where we stand right now

We've already built the data architecture for our research projects and are starting to collect data. Two research lines are taking shape, both for adults with an autism spectrum disorder: EAGLE, a collaborative R&D project on recognizing symptoms from audio and text, and Narrative ROM, where we rethink outcome monitoring based on session narratives instead of questionnaires. Both are backed by research grants, so there's room to do this properly in terms of scientific and technical aspects.

05

A day in the life

Read & think

Reading recent AI papers, thinking through approaches, and working out how mental health constructs like symptoms, risk factors or therapeutic alliance can be captured with today's models.

Build & evaluate

Turning the most promising idea into an experiment, running evaluations, and extending the pipelines that tell us whether an approach actually holds up.

Spar with the team

A developer on how to productionize something, or a psychologist on whether the model's output means what we think it means.

Work with partners

Talking with research partners, universities, and the mental health institutions we work with, aligning on studies, data and what to validate next.

Keep learning

Learning new things through relevant trainings, courses or the occasional conference.

Log off, together

Team getaways, days out on the water and other plans that have nothing to do with benchmarks.

Okay. Maybe not every day. It would be a very long day if you do all of these at once.

06

What do we offer?

€ 4,200 – € 6,500

Gross per month, competitive and depending on your experience.

Option package: share in the success of Ontzorgd
25 vacation days + more by arrangement
Friday afternoon drinks and (tech) events
A healthy dose of humour at the office
A lot of autonomy in how you do your work
Real influence on the research agenda and the product
Build something that counts for care professionals and patients
Hybrid working possible, though we like you (mostly) at the office
07

The application process

1Intro chat

An informal conversation about who you are and whether it clicks.

2Deep-dive & team

We dig into a model or AI workflow you validated, and you meet the people you'll work with.

3Case study

A practical research and implementation case: how would you tackle it?

4Offer

Does it click on both sides? Then we make you an offer.

Ready to join?

Send your CV or LinkedIn profile to sander@ontzorgd.ai. Tell us briefly about a model or AI workflow you validated from start to finish, and if you have an affinity or experience with psychology, mental health or healthcare in general, we'd love to hear about that too. We care more about how you think than where you've worked.

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