Senior Product Engineer
€6,000 - €8,000 per month
Key Skills
Job Description
Our mission is to put quality teams in the food industry in control of their to-do list and inbox. We do that by building an AI colleague they trust to finish real jobs end to end, in the tools they already use. Behind it we’re building the operational system that makes that possible as usage grows: agents, workflows, data, integrations, and evidence so every answer traces back to the customer’s own source documents. We’re three years in, with leading Dutch and international food players as customers, €1.4M raised, and an ambitious growth plan ahead. People on our team have lived this problem themselves. We work closely with our customers and build with them. That is a plus here, not a disruption. We like passionate builders who get excited about hard product problems, ship solid code, and bring crazy ideas. About the role Passionfruit is building an AI colleague for quality teams at food and ingredients companies. On the surface that’s questionnaires, contracts, certificate renewals, and similar recurring work finished in SharePoint, QMS, inbox, Excel, Word, and portals. Underneath we’re building the operational system that makes that possible: agents, workflows, data, integrations, and grounding so answers are traceable to the customer’s own specs and files. That system already runs for paying customers. More teams are coming on, and more work is running through it. The next stretch is to harden and grow it so the colleague can be trusted with more of the job end to end, while we keep iterating and shipping in small steps. You’ll own that production core and work closely with Lars (CPO), Maikel (CEO), and the engineering team. You close technical discussions and own the technical call once product direction is clear. Keep agents and workflows working in the messy tools customers already use. Make the system more reliable as usage grows. Stay close to the code and get important work live. This is still an early seat: the person who joins will shape how we build. We’re a small team doing something uncommon here, and we enjoy the craft of it. Example projects Building and improving agents and the systems around them: setup, evals, measuring results, and iterating under real usage Building retrieval and evidence flows so every answer is traceable to the customer’s own source documents Integrating those agents into messy enterprise tools so quality jobs finish end to end in the systems customers already use Strengthening infra and security basics as usage grows (access, data handling, safe tool use), so the system stays trustworthy Improving reliability and observability so problems show up early and get fixed fast Setting technical direction with product and the engineering team, translating the roadmap into technical commitments with Lars, closing the hard technical calls, owning the codebase deeply enough to unblock others, and driving important work to live You may be a fit if You’ve shipped production AI agents or workflows people actually work with. You’ve used real usage and evals to make them better, and you’ve built for grounding and evidence, not only for a clever answer. You’ve owned technical direction with a small team, closed technical discussions yourself, and taken important work all the way to live. You’re comfortable when the playbook isn’t written yet: set a direction, stay close to the code, and change course when the product needs it. You’ve kept systems reliable as load and mess grew. Enterprise tools, infra, and security basics are part of how you build, not an afterthought. You treat that work as what lets the product earn trust, not as paperwork. You’ve led a small engineering team without formal hierarchy so decisions land and work moves as one. You make the hard calls clear and keep people aligned. You’re customer-obsessed: building with customers is something you want, not something that gets in the way. You’re strong in TypeScript / Node, and you still ship production software with your own hands. You care about the customer problem as much as the craft, and you’re excited to help grow something early in a real industry, not polish a finished platform. What we offer Salary: €6,000–€8,000 / month gross Shares Rotterdam hybrid Early seat next to Lars (CPTO) and Maikel (CEO): real ownership of the production core, not a passenger role Work closely with customers and build with them Applying If there appears to be a fit, we’ll reach out for a short intro call with Lars, then a hands-on technical session on a real product problem (agents, integrations, or reliability), and a final conversation with Maikel and the team. Apply to [email protected].
Core Responsibilities
Own and strengthen the production core behind AI agents and workflows, including retrieval and evidence flows, enterprise integrations, reliability, observability, infrastructure, and security. Set technical direction with product and engineering, make key technical decisions, stay hands-on in the code, and deliver important work to production in close collaboration with customers.
Requirements
Candidates should have shipped production AI agents or workflows and improved them using real-world usage and evaluations, with a focus on grounded, traceable answers. They should be strong in TypeScript and Node.js, experienced in technical ownership and small-team leadership, and able to build reliable, secure systems while remaining hands-on and customer-focused.
Benefits
- Shares
- Hybrid Work
- Early-Stage Ownership
- Customer Collaboration
About Passionfruit
Industry: IT Services and IT Consulting
Company size: 2-10 employees
Quality teams at food-ingredient suppliers are drowning in customer questionnaires, spec checks, and cert renewals — recurring work that keeps growing faster than a 3–8 person team can clear it. The usual answer is to hire. But you don't actually want someone to fill out forms — you want a colleague who does quality work: runs the recurring jobs, keeps information current, and catches what's about to lapse before it does. That's Passionfruit. It connects to your SharePoint, QMS, and inbox and gets to work there — nothing copied into a separate system. Hand it a questionnaire and it answers it. Hand it a spec comparison or a CoA and it fills it. Leave it the recurring jobs — cert renewals, CoA-to-customer — and it runs them on its own, the way a colleague you trust doesn't wait to be asked twice. It still checks in before anything goes out. Every task shows its source and its reasoning, so you're signing off on your colleague's work, not rubber-stamping a black box — defensible the moment an auditor asks. Generic AI answers the question you type. Passionfruit does the job you'd hire for — an expert colleague that already knows food-ingredient compliance, learns how your team works, and gets more indispensable the longer it runs. Built for quality teams at food-ingredient suppliers and traders whose work has outgrown them, at a fraction of the cost of the next hire.