AI Operations Manager (all genders)

About the role

Too easy is boring! Together, we are on a mission to drive forward the energy transition. We love what we do, and we are unafraid to dive in. We believe in taking ownership of our work and in continuously growing and evolving. In short: own it, love it, grow with it.  We are a humble team of coffee and maté lovers with over 20 nationalities. With our geek humor, our love for emojis and random facts is only natural. Over 200 envelians are already on board. Dive in and thrive!As an  AI Operations Manager (all genders) , you drive how envelio adopts and uses AI internally as a company - discovering high-value AI use cases across departments and shaping them into a coherent landscape that teams actually use, rather than a patchwork of individual experiments. Above all, you are the enabler and connector for AI adoption across envelio. The heart of this role is working hand in hand with every department: discovering concrete AI use cases, understanding what value AI can bring to each team's value streams, and being the link that turns those opportunities into real adoption on the ground. The technical direction, architecture, and platform are owned by our AI Platform Engineers; your success is measured by adoption across the company, not by the technology itself. This is a senior individual contributor role with company-wide reach. You don't manage people, but you shape decisions and patterns that touch every function at envelio. Who You Work With Department leads across envelio - your primary stakeholders and the source of most use cases
AI champions in every department - embedded counterparts who scout use cases, pilot patterns, and drive adoption inside their teams; you'll work with them day-to-day to turn ideas into reusable patterns
AI Platform Engineers - the role that owns the technical direction, platform, and architecture; you bring them the use cases and requirements, and they make the technical decisions
Engineering teams building or using internal AI - you bring use cases to them and collaborate closely, rather than setting the technical bar yourself
Governance, security, and executive leadership - partners on direction, policy, and decisions
You act as the enabler and connector for AI adoption across envelio — partnering closely with every department to discover AI use cases, map them to the value AI can create in each team's value streams, and be the link that turns scattered experiments into shared momentum
You build a clear picture of where AI can create value across how envelio works internally: which problems are worth solving, and which use cases to prioritize first
You surface and champion the use cases teams pursue and help define what success looks like so the value is real and measurable
You translate department needs into clear requirements for AI tooling and AI-enabled SaaS, partnering with the AI Platform Engineers who own the technical evaluation and selection
You bring the use-case and value perspective into envelio's strategic AI questions, so that platform and build-vs-buy decisions reflect what departments actually need
You partner with governance to translate policy into patterns teams can follow, and drive adoption across departments
You bring deep technical credibility to every department - enough to judge what's feasible, pressure-test ideas, and earn engineers' trust
Perfection is a myth! We're more interested in the human behind the screen, so think of these criteria as helpful directions — we're excited to see how your unique skills might fit in. Strong software engineering background at senior level or above, with a track record of taking technical responsibility for systems real users depend on - enough to earn engineers' trust and pressure-test ideas without needing to own the architecture
Strong conceptual fluency across the main AI building blocks (LLMs, vision, multimodal, classical ML) and a clear sense of when each is the right tool for a given problem
Track record of leading cross-functional AI or architectural efforts across multiple teams
Pragmatic about build vs. buy, and comfortable with governance, compliance, and risk (ISO 27001, GDPR, NIS2, EU AI Act as constraints to design around)
Strong communicator with audiences outside engineering; mentors and raises the bar without a line-management title
Fluent in English; German is a plus
AI is a company-wide capability, not an engineering side project - and adoption is the hardest part
People across teams already use approved AI tools - AI coding assistants, meeting summarisation, and more - and we are deliberately moving from scattered individual experiments toward a shared, governed approach
Every AI workflow is paired with evaluation and observability: Build-vs-buy decisions are made deliberately against compliance and EU/US regulatory exposure
Governance and security (ISO 27001, NIS2, EU AI Act, BDEW) shape what we ship. This work serves the whole company, with department leads as customers and AI champions in every department as your day-to-day collaborators
Use cases are tracked in a central database; a company-wide AI initiative drives strategy, governance, and adoption - this role sits at the heart of that initiative
Join us fully remote or at our lovely office in Cologne in a hybrid working mode
Option for remote work from abroad (up to three months per year from anywhere in the EU or the USA)
State-of-the-art technology and modern tech stack
Excellent hardware equipment (16-inch MacBooks, 2 screens at the office)
30 holidays + 3 corporate holidays
Support for your health through sports membership cooperations
Flexible use of a monthly mobility budget (e.g. Jobrad, public transport)
Time and resources for individual growth
envelio pension plan
Professional mental wellbeing support through our partner nilo for you and your family
Regular tech and growth talks for internal knowledge sharing
Regular company and team events