Lead AI Engineer
- Cleland, United Kingdom
Posted 4 days ago
About the role
Lead AI Engineer | Belfast (Remote-First) | AI Centre of Excellence
At a Glance
- Sits within a dedicated AI Centre of Excellence
- Stack: Azure, Python, React, Terraform
- Northern Ireland – Remote working
About the Company
A large, well-established global technology company with a dedicated AI Centre of Excellence — a team set apart from its core consulting and digital services divisions, focused purely on applied research and product builds using the latest Microsoft AI technology.
Role Overview
You'll join a close-knit team of around 10-11 engineers (the majority in Belfast, with others in Poland, Birmingham, and London) as a Senior AI Engineer, providing technical leadership on AI-powered products and applied research work. This isn't a billable, consulting-style role — there's no utilisation target and no client delivery pressure. The team is genuinely AI-first: they're looking for strong, well-rounded engineers rather than candidates who tick every box, whether your background is more AI-shaped or more software-shaped.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide technical leadership and own architecture, planning, and delivery for AI-powered products and applied research projects
- Build and integrate AI/ML solutions — model integration, evaluation, prompt engineering, and RAG pipelines — using Azure AI services (Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Foundry, Cognitive Services)
- Design and develop across the full stack, from API design and data pipelines through to front-end integration
- Coach, mentor, and support the development of junior engineers within the team
- Drive modern CI/CD practice, including model versioning, experiment tracking, and automated evaluation for ML/AI workloads
What You'll Need
Essential:
- Strong hands-on experience in Python or C#/.NET, with real experience building AI/ML-powered products (model integration, evaluation, prompt engineering, or RAG)
- Technical experience — owning architecture, planning, and delivery for a product or project, with a track record of coaching and developing junior engineers
- Experience with Microsoft Azure AI services (Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Foundry, Cognitive Services) or an equivalent cloud AI platform
Desirable:
- Familiarity with the Microsoft agent ecosystem — Microsoft Agent Framework, Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Agents SDK, or Semantic Kernel
- Understanding of responsible AI practice — content filtering, PII handling, bias testing, governance of autonomous agent actions
- Experience with vector databases or search indices, and broader public cloud platforms (Azure or AWS)
Benefits & Package
- £ DOE
- Fully remote-first NI Wide — no mandatory office days, with an optional Wednesday in-office and roughly monthly full-team get-togethers
- Straightforward two-stage interview process — culture and skills, then a technical deep dive — no take-home assessment
Get in touch with Colin directly at colin@ochopeople.com