Lead AI Engineer

AI Engineer

• Leading UK Retailer
• London (Hybrid Working)
• 12 Months
• Inside IR35

This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in shaping and delivering next generation AI capabilities within a large scale retail environment.

Role Responsibilities

• Design and develop Agentic AI solutions capable of multi-step reasoning, planning, and autonomous action execution.
• Architect multi agent systems, orchestration patterns, and scalable AI microservices.
• Build AI applications using Python and Azure OpenAI technologies.
• Develop RAG architectures and integrate vector search solutions.
• Implement orchestration workflows using Semantic Kernel and LangGraph.
• Integrate enterprise systems, APIs, and tools using MCP and similar frameworks.
• Establish AI governance, security, safety, and responsible AI practices.
• Lead the implementation and deployment of AI services into production environments.
• Collaborate with architects, product teams, and business stakeholders to deliver AI driven solutions.
• Optimise performance, scalability, cost, and latency of LLM based applications.

Experience Required

• Proven experience designing and delivering production grade AI and Generative AI solutions.
• Strong expertise in Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, Semantic Kernel, and LangGraph.
• Experience building multi agent architectures, RAG solutions, and complex orchestration workflows.
• Strong Python development skills with experience building scalable microservices.
• Knowledge of MCP (Model Context Protocol) and AI tool integration frameworks.
• Experience with event driven architectures, REST APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, MLOps, and LLMOps.
• Solid understanding of vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, and relational/NoSQL databases.
• Experience defining AI governance frameworks, coding standards, and best practices.
• Ability to troubleshoot and support AI solutions in production environments.