Role · AI specialist
What does an AI specialist do inside an organisation?
An AI specialist moves between research and delivery: what is possible, what is permitted, and what it returns once it runs. They build applications with machine learning or generative AI and set up how to work with them responsibly. That second part is usually why it keeps working.
What do you do in this role?
The AI specialist moves between research and delivery: what is possible, what is permitted, and what it returns once it runs.
- Machine learning and generative AI
- Building and assessing applications
- Setting up responsible use
What companies look for in an AI specialist
- Someone who measures where AI saves time and where it does not. That second answer is just as valuable and rarely given.
- Someone who knows which data may and may not go in, and can put that on paper without producing a policy nobody reads.
- Applications that get further than a pilot with one enthusiastic colleague.
- Level-headedness. The market is full of promises; a client is looking for someone who says what cannot be done.
What matters
- Python and the usual libraries, and enough engineering to get something out of a notebook.
- Working with language models: framing instructions, retrieving from your own sources, and knowing the limits.
- Evaluation: how do you measure whether an AI application beats what was already there?
- The rules. The AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026 and touches exactly this work.
- Being able to explain to a board why something can or cannot be done.
How the role is changing
The role is splitting. On one side engineering is being added: building applications, connecting them to your own sources, running and securing them. On the other side governance is being added: what is allowed, who is responsible, and how you record that. Anyone who only calls models will be overtaken by tooling; anyone who picks one of those two sides becomes scarcer rather than less scarce.
How you stand out among the other hundred
By showing one application that is still running, with the numbers: how many people use it, how often, and what it saves. Everyone has done something with AI by now. Almost nobody can show it is still there six months later, and that is exactly every client's worry.
What every role has in common
Companies increasingly look for someone who is broadly deployable. That does not mean you have to be able to do everything: it means you look into the disciplines around yours.
As a BI specialist you do not have to be an AI specialist. But if you demonstrably use AI in your work and keep learning about it, you become added value rather than replaceable. The same goes for communicating across departments: anyone who recognises the problems, pitfalls and opportunities of sales or finance delivers work that actually lands there.
What you can earn
Our own rates are based on a gross full-time monthly salary of € 3.000 to € 3.200. That is the floor we work from for a starting professional working full time.
A market indication per role is deliberately absent. The same job title varies widely between companies (a senior BI specialist earns noticeably less at one employer than at another) and the region weighs heavily: Amsterdam sits above Eindhoven, Eindhoven above Rotterdam, and Rotterdam above Drenthe. Quoting a number without checking it would mislead you in a conversation about your own income.
Just ask us. We see what the market pays and we will tell you what we know, including when we do not know.
Current vacancies
There is no vacancy open in this role right now. Sign up anyway: most of the work we do is never advertised.
Through which brand does a ai specialist reach you?
- New Data Student
- a student or starter, with guidance, for the work that keeps being postponed
- New Data Squad
- an experienced professional who sets the lines and guides the change
- New Data Search
- somebody you employ yourself
Which form fits depends on the question, not on what we happen to sell.
Do you work as a ai specialist?
Leave your details. We find the assignment that fits what you can do, not the other way round.