Head of Internal Technology & AI (f/m/x) - remote
About this role
Founded in 2017, refurbed is Europe’s fastest-growing marketplace for refurbished products, active in 12 European countries and having surpassed €2Bn in GMV — all while being profitable. With beautiful headquarters in Vienna, we operate as a remote-first company, and our 250+ employees enjoy up to two months of workation per year. We’ve also been recognised as a Top DACH Employer by Kununu for three consecutive years.
Our mission is to make sustainable consumption the easy choice by enabling customers to buy products up to 40% cheaper while significantly reducing CO₂ emissions.
If you thrive in an environment that values momentum, ownership, and impact, you’ll feel at home here. We’re a fast-paced, high-performance team that works hard and challenges itself everyday. To enable this high-performance every team member enjoys full autonomy over their location (we’re remote-first).
Lead the next chapter of refurbed's AI & Tech transformation, building on the foundations in place to make refurbed a truly AI-native company. Refine and push the strategy and roadmap further, embedding AI and technology tools and mindset ever more deeply into how teams work everyday.
This role owns both sides of the transformation: the change-management side (strategy, adoption, upskilling, governance) as well as the technology and IT enabler side (internal AI tooling, corporate IT, and the team that builds and runs both). Success is measured by real productivity gains, upskilling progress, durable cultural change, and the reliability and velocity of refurbed's internal technology backbone.
WHO YOU ARE:
Track record leading cross-functional AI or digital transformation end-to-end (strategy through adoption) in a scaling tech company or top-tier technology / IT advisory environment; alternatively, a technical degree with a deliberate move into business, strategy, or transformation roles
Engineering background strong enough to drive architecture and challenge senior engineers on architecture and trade-offs - you don't need to write production code, but you can read it
A product mindset for internal products and services and internal customers
Deep change-management expertise: turning new ways of working into durable habits rather than one-off rollouts; strong stakeholder management across senior leaders and department champions
Structured thinker and communicator: frames messy cross-functional problems, drives trade-offs, and produces decision-ready material for C-Level; comfortable owning a portfolio (prioritisation, ROI, regular steering)
Working fluency with the modern AI engineering stack (LLMs, agents, MCPs, plugin/skill ecosystems, coding assistants, agent harnesses); credible technical sparring partner for senior engineers on the AI stack and integration patterns
Leadership exposure to internal AI/engineering teams and classical IT operations - owning outcomes through a team, not personally administering systems
Nice to have: AI governance / EU AI Act exposure; marketplace, e-commerce, or scaling-org context
Location & eligibility: This role is open to candidates based in Europe (including UK) only with a valid right to work.
Responsibilities
- AI transformation and change management:
- Refine and lead refurbed's AI transformation strategy in alignment with business and technology goals
- Evolve refurbed's AI strategy into a clear, prioritized portfolio of initiatives with owners, timelines, and impact targets
- Regularly review and adjust the portfolio based on business performance, risks, and learnings
- Scale adoption of AI-first ways of working (productivity, automation, and improved decision-making) across all functions, partnering with department leads to deepen AI integration into employee workflows and systems
- Continue to drive company-wide change management: AI literacy, role-specific upskilling, and hands-on enablement for teams and leaders
- Evolve and own AI governance, including responsible usage, data readiness, tooling standards, and measurement of impact
- Technology and IT enabler:
- Set direction for internal AI engineering: the portfolio of internal AI tooling, agents, automations, integrations, and shared services that unlock productivity across the business
- Drive build-vs-buy recommendations to the CPTO across the AI tooling landscape - bring the analysis, the trade-offs, and a clear point of view; own the third-party AI stack and general business tooling in close partnership with the CPTO and product engineering
- Own corporate IT outcomes end-to-end (device management, identity and access, SaaS administration, helpdesk, IT operations) and the standards for how internal systems, tools, and data are integrated so AI can be deployed effectively - including a registry of what runs at refurbed, who owns it, and status, etc.
- Team and hiring:
- Lead and develop a small cross-disciplinary team of AI & IT Engineers and admins, building a high-performing function and a strong engineering and IT service culture
- WHY YOU WILL ENJOY WORKING WITH US:
- Our Culture and Values:
- Decisions should be made based on facts and not by hierarchy levels? We sure think so!
- We embrace giving and receiving feedback, testing and welcoming new ideas, as well as sharing our knowledge across the company.
- You fail sometimes? Well, so do we! We’re all just human, let’s learn from our mistakes to improve in the future!
- No matter who you love, where you’re from, who you pray to, whether you pee sitting down or standing up – we are a bunch of talented people who enjoy spending our time making a difference!
- Personal & Professional Development:
- You'll have access to a dedicated learning budget within your department to support your growth, whether it's courses, conferences, or other learning opportunities that matter to you.
- We partner with Likeminded, offering you private sessions with experts for your personal growth and mental health.
- We frequently host internal workshops, allowing our teams to further develop their skills in different areas and enhancing collaboration across departments.
- Flexibility:
- We care about a healthy work/life balance. We not only function and support a fully remote setting but also offer the possibility to work from our beautiful office in the vibrant heart of Vienna – we love dogs, so feel free to bring your furry little buddy too 😊
- We trust you to do the best job, so we don't care so much when you do it – you are able to self-organize.
- You will also be invited to take part in our office weeks, happening three times a year, where you will have the chance to work side by side with your colleagues and enjoy the team-building events and on-site workshops
- …and much more! See https://careers.refurbed.com/ for further insights!