Senior AI Engineer

Senior AI Engineer Manchester

A growing technology-led business is seeking a Senior AI Engineer to play a pivotal role in shaping and delivering its AI strategy. This is a senior-level, hands-on position responsible for designing, building, and deploying enterprise-grade AI solutions that drive measurable business value across the organisation.

Working closely with IT, Data, Engineering, and senior business stakeholders, you will lead the development and implementation of advanced AI solutions, leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), AI Agents, Machine Learning, and Azure AI services. You will provide technical leadership, establish best practices, and help build the organisation s long-term AI capability.

The business is investing heavily in AI and is looking for someone who can combine deep technical expertise with strategic thinking, taking solutions from concept through to production deployment and adoption.

The ideal candidate will have a strong foundation in AI Engineering combined with a robust Data Science background, enabling them to develop, evaluate, and optimise AI solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes.

This role would suit an experienced AI professional who enjoys solving complex business challenges, mentoring others, influencing technical direction, and delivering innovative AI solutions at scale.

Role Purpose

As a Senior AI Engineer, you will lead the design, development, deployment, and optimisation of enterprise AI solutions, ensuring they are secure, scalable, maintainable, and aligned to business objectives.

You will act as a subject matter expert for AI technologies, helping to define architecture, establish standards, and guide the organisation s AI roadmap while remaining hands-on with implementation.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy advanced AI and Machine Learning solutions to solve complex business challenges.
• Lead the architecture and implementation of production-grade AI applications using LLMs, RAG pipelines, AI Agents, and Azure AI services.
• Provide technical leadership across AI initiatives, ensuring solutions follow best practices for scalability, security, performance, and governance.
• Own the full AI development lifecycle, from discovery and proof-of-concept through to production deployment and business adoption.
• Develop and optimise AI models, prompt engineering frameworks, vector databases, and retrieval systems.
• Design and implement AI agent architectures, workflow automation, and API integrations.
• Collaborate with Infrastructure and Engineering teams to deploy AI solutions securely within enterprise environments.
• Ensure solutions leverage Private Endpoints, secure networking, identity management, and enterprise-grade governance controls.
• Establish monitoring, evaluation, and observability frameworks for AI systems, including hallucination detection, model drift monitoring, performance tracking, and cost optimisation.
• Partner with operational and commercial stakeholders to identify high-value AI opportunities and define business cases.
• Measure and report on AI project outcomes, including efficiency gains, automation benefits, cost savings, and customer experience improvements.
• Mentor and support other technical team members, promoting AI best practices and knowledge sharing across the organisation.
• Contribute to the development of the organisation s AI strategy, roadmap, and future capability.

Required Experience

Essential

• Significant commercial experience in AI Engineering, Machine Learning Engineering, Applied AI, or Data Science roles.
• Expert-level Python development skills and deep experience with modern AI/ML frameworks and SDKs.
• Proven experience designing and deploying production-grade RAG solutions and LLM-powered applications.
• Strong experience building and deploying AI agents, orchestration frameworks, and automated workflows.
• Experience with Azure AI Services, Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning, or equivalent enterprise AI platforms.
• Strong understanding of enterprise cloud architecture, including VNets, Entra ID, API Gateways, networking, and secure integrations.
• Experience deploying and managing AI workloads within production environments.
• Strong SQL and data engineering skills, working with both structured and unstructured datasets.
• Ability to translate complex datasets into actionable insights and AI-driven business solutions.
• Experience implementing AI governance, security, monitoring, and operational best practices.
• Excellent communication, leadership, stakeholder management, and problem-solving skills.

Highly Desirable

• Strong Data Science background, with experience in statistical modelling, predictive analytics, feature engineering, experimentation, and model evaluation.
• Experience applying Data Science methodologies to solve complex business problems and identify opportunities for AI adoption.
• Experience with GenAIOps, LLMOps, MLOps, and AI observability platforms.
• Exposure to Computer Vision, OCR, Voice AI, Conversational AI, or multimodal AI solutions.
• Experience working within operational, retail, automotive, logistics, or customer-centric organisations.
• Knowledge of Responsible AI, AI governance frameworks, and regulatory considerations.
• Previous experience leading AI initiatives, mentoring engineers, or helping define AI strategy and roadmap.
• Experience building or contributing to an AI Centre of Excellence or internal AI capability function.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for someone who combines deep technical expertise with commercial awareness and a pragmatic approach to AI delivery. You'll be comfortable operating at both strategic and hands-on levels, engaging with senior stakeholders while also designing, developing, and deploying solutions yourself.

You should be passionate about emerging AI technologies and have a track record of turning innovative ideas into production-ready solutions that create measurable business value.

Salary & Benefits

• Competitive salary depending on experience
• Quarterly bonus scheme
• Hybrid working arrangement 3 days in the office / 2 days remote
• Opportunity to lead and shape enterprise AI capability
• Exposure to high-profile AI transformation initiatives
• Strong long-term career progression opportunities
• Ongoing investment in training, certifications, and professional development

Interested?

If you're an experienced AI Engineer or Data Science professional looking to take ownership of impactful AI initiatives and help shape the future direction of AI within a growing organisation, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply now for the Senior AI Engineer opportunity in Manchester.

Senior AI Engineer Manchester