Principal AI Engineer (London)
CBRE is building the future of AI driven data governance and analytics at enterprise scale. We're looking for a Principal AI Engineer to lead the charge - someone who can architect solutions, ship code, and use AI to move fast.
This is a new, high impact individual contributor role reporting directly to the Senior Director of Data Governance and Engineering. You'll have a clear path to building and leading a team as we scale - embedded in a 20 person governance and engineering team, working at the intersection of AI/ML, data quality, and master data management.
Why This Role Matters at CBRE
AI is not a future capability at CBRE - it's the next phase of how we operate at scale. Our data estate spans commercial real estate transactions, property assets, and client relationships across the globe, and the volume and complexity of that data demands intelligence, not just automation. This Principal Engineer will be the first to architect and ship AI native solutions across our governance and MDM programs - defining how LLMs, agents, and ML models become embedded in how CBRE manages and trusts its data.
Your First Mission (Months 1-6)
Build a proof of concept using LLMs to automate data stewardship in our Reltio MDM platform - specifically, AI driven entity matching and merging. Prove that LLMs can make our data cleaner, faster, and smarter.
From there, you'll help shape how CBRE adopts AI across data governance, analytics, and beyond - moving from proof of concept to production, and from one use case to many.
What you will be doing: AI/ML Solution Architecture
- Architect and implement AI/ML solutions that drive data quality, governance, and analytics at scale across CBRE's enterprise data estate.
- Integrate LLMs via our internal Ellis AI platform into data workflows - entity matching, classification, quality scoring, and anomaly detection.
- Design agent frameworks and RAG pipelines that connect CBRE's proprietary data assets to LLM capabilities in a governed, production ready way.
- Evaluate emerging AI capabilities and translate them into prioritised, implementable solutions aligned to CBRE's governance and data strategy.
Platform Engineering & Delivery
- Build production systems using Python, AWS, Snowflake, and Reltio APIs - you architect and you ship.
- Use AI to write code - we expect you to move fast with modern AI assisted development tooling and set the standard for the team.
- Embed AI capabilities into existing data pipelines and governance workflows, ensuring solutions are scalable, observable, and maintainable in production.
Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
- Collaborate cross functionally with data engineers, governance teams, DQ engineers, and business stakeholders to identify and prioritise AI use cases.
- Partner with the Collibra and SODA engineering leads to identify where AI can accelerate metadata enrichment, DQ automation, and stewardship workflows.
- Evangelise AI adoption across the data team - teach, mentor, and influence how CBRE thinks about AI and data at every level of the organization.
What You Bring Must Haves
- Experience building production data and engineering systems with demonstrable delivery at enterprise scale.
- Deep hands on experience with LLMs - not just using APIs, but architecting solutions: prompting strategies, RAG, fine tuning, and agent frameworks.
- Expert level Python and modern ML/AI frameworks.
- AWS experience - you know how to build, deploy, and scale on cloud infrastructure.
- Track record of shipping AI products that solve real business problems - not just prototypes.
- Architect + implementer mindset - you design elegant systems and roll up your sleeves to build them.
Nice to Haves
- Experience with Master Data Management (MDM) or Reltio specifically.
- Snowflake expertise - data modelling, Snowpark, or Cortex ML.
- Prior work in commercial real estate or large enterprise data environments.
- Familiarity with Collibra or SODA - understanding how AI augments governance and DQ platforms.
Our Stack
- AI Platform - internal LLM platform with OpenAI, Gemini, and more, Claude
- Cloud - AWS
- Data Warehouse - Snowflake
- MDM - Reltio
- Data Governance - Collibra
- DQ Platform - SODA
- Integration - SnapLogic
- Languages - Python (primary), SQL
Applicant AI Use Disclosure
We value human interaction to understand each candidate's unique experience, skills and aspirations. We do not use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to make hiring decisions, and we ask that candidates disclose any use of AI in the application and interview process.
We welcome all applicants.