Senior AI Engineer - Perm UK

Senior AI Engineer

Location: Remote (UK) or Hybrid - London (2 days per week in the office if London-based)
Salary: £65,000 - £80,000 + Excellent Benefits
Job Type: Permanent

Please note: Applicants must have the right to work in the UK. Unfortunately, visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

The Opportunity

We're looking for a Senior AI Engineer to join a growing AI and Data Engineering function responsible for designing, building and scaling enterprise-grade AI platforms.
This is an exciting opportunity to work on cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Large Language Model (LLM) initiatives, helping to transform innovative AI research into secure, scalable production systems.
The role is open to candidates across the UK, with fully remote working available. For those based near London, there is the option to work hybrid (2 days per week in the office).
You'll work alongside Data Scientists, Software Engineers and Product teams, taking ownership of complex AI services, data pipelines and cloud-native architectures that power intelligent products used at scale.

The Role

As a Senior AI Engineer, you'll play a key role in designing, architecting and delivering AI infrastructure with a high degree of autonomy. You'll help bridge the gap between research and production by developing scalable services, engineering robust data pipelines and implementing best practices across modern AI engineering.
You'll also provide technical leadership within your squad, mentoring engineers and influencing engineering standards across the wider technology organisation.

Key Responsibilities

Design, build and maintain scalable AI data pipelines and processing workflows.
Architect cloud-native backend systems and distributed AI services.
Collaborate closely with Data Scientists to productionise Machine Learning and NLP models.
Develop high-performance RESTful APIs and microservices for AI model serving.
Drive system reliability, monitoring, observability and performance optimisation.
Champion engineering best practices including CI/CD, automated testing and Infrastructure as Code.
Improve integration, interoperability and data exchange across enterprise platforms.
Translate complex technical requirements into scalable engineering solutions.
Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership across projects.
Contribute to architecture decisions, engineering standards and long-term technology strategy.

About You

You'll be an experienced Software, Data or AI Engineer with a passion for building scalable AI solutions and solving complex engineering challenges.
You'll ideally have:

A degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence or a related discipline.
5+ years' commercial experience in AI Engineering, Machine Learning Engineering, Backend Engineering or Data Engineering.
Expert-level Python development experience.
Experience productionising Machine Learning, NLP or Generative AI models.
Strong experience designing and building RESTful APIs and microservices using frameworks such as FastAPI, Flask or Django.
Strong SQL skills with experience designing performant relational database solutions.
Commercial experience with AWS and/or Azure cloud platforms.
Experience designing distributed systems and scalable architectures.
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes and containerised deployments.
Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and engineering best practices.
Excellent communication skills with experience mentoring engineers and collaborating across cross-functional teams.

Desirable Experience

Experience with any of the following would be highly advantageous:

Large Language Models (LLMs)
Amazon Bedrock
Azure AI Foundry
PyTorch
FastAPI
Knowledge Graphs
Kubernetes
Docker
Infrastructure as Code
MLOps
Event-Driven Architecture
Vector Databases
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Technology Stack

Python
SQL
FastAPI
PyTorch
Docker
Kubernetes
AWS
Azure
Git
CI/CD
Knowledge Graphs
AI / Large Language Models (LLMs)
Amazon Bedrock
Azure AI Foundry

What's on Offer

£65,000 - £75,000 salary
Remote-first role with flexibility to work anywhere in the UK
Optional hybrid working from the London office (2 days per week)
Annual bonus
Private healthcare
Pension scheme
25+ days annual leave plus bank holidays
Learning and development budget
Career progression within a growing AI Engineering function
Opportunity to work on enterprise-scale AI, Machine Learning and Generative AI initiatives using the latest technologies
Collaborative engineering culture focused on innovation, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement

Eligibility

Applicants must have the right to work in the UK. Unfortunately, visa sponsorship is not available, so we are unable to consider candidates requiring current or future sponsorship.
If you're passionate about building production-grade AI platforms and want to work on cutting-edge AI solutions with the flexibility of remote working, we'd love to hear from you
Only candidates based in UK and eligible to work in UK are allowed