Principal AI Engineer

Principal AI Engineer - Remote The Opportunity We’re working with one of the world’s leading data and AI learning platforms, with 17+ million learners and 6,000+ enterprise customers globally. Their mission is simple: make data and AI skills accessible to everyone through practical, hands-on learning. The AI Creator team is now taking this a step further by building the next generation of AI-powered learning. The team is tackling Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem - the idea that one-to-one tutoring can dramatically outperform traditional teaching, but has historically been impossible to deliver at scale. Using LLMs and AI agents, they’re building an intelligent system that can personalise learning in real time, adapt to individual users, guide them through real-world problems and help turn knowledge into action. This is an opportunity to work on a genuinely ambitious AI product with the potential to transform how millions of people learn. The Role We’re looking for a Principal AI Engineer to help build the core AI technology behind this vision. This is a highly hands-on role for someone who genuinely enjoys building, experimenting and shipping AI products. You’ll work at the intersection of AI engineering, product development and learning science, helping turn emerging AI capabilities into experiences that millions of people can actually use. This is not an AI infrastructure or management role. We’re looking for a technically deep builder who wants genuine ownership of the product and the opportunity to shape how the technology works from the ground up. What you’ll be doing * Build and evolve the core AI tutoring system, including prompt architectures, agentic workflows and real-time adaptive behaviours. * Design and run rigorous experiments to improve model performance, reliability and learning effectiveness. * Develop custom evaluation frameworks and metrics to understand whether AI interactions are genuinely improving the learner experience. * Design and implement scalable, maintainable software integrating AI with platform, content and product systems. * Prototype novel AI capabilities and take successful ideas from experimentation through to production. * Work closely with product teams, educators and content creators to translate pedagogical goals into effective AI solutions. * Develop monitoring, testing, guardrails and observability to ensure AI systems are reliable, safe and continuously improving. * Stay close to emerging AI research and capabilities, identifying opportunities to apply new techniques to real product challenges. * Mentor other engineers and contribute to a culture of technical excellence, experimentation and continuous learning. What we’re looking for * Hands-on experience building complex LLM-based systems, including strong prompt engineering and agentic workflows. * A proven track record of building and shipping AI products in a commercial environment. * Strong software engineering fundamentals and architectural thinking, with excellent Python skills. * Experience working with production cloud environments, infrastructure and CI/CD. * Strong understanding of LLM evaluation, experimentation and model behaviour, including the ability to create bespoke evaluation approaches. * A genuine interest in emerging AI research and the ability to translate new capabilities into practical products. * Experience taking AI solutions from prototype through to production. * The ability to think holistically across AI behaviour, product design, content and user experience. * Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. The type of person we’re looking for Above all, we’re looking for a builder. Someone who has genuinely created and shipped AI products, rather than someone whose experience is primarily focused on infrastructure, automation or managing teams. You might have built AI applications outside of work, contributed to open-source projects, experimented with the latest models and agentic frameworks, or simply have a habit of exploring what’s possible with new technology. You’re comfortable with ambiguity and enjoy problems where there isn't an established blueprint. You’re technically curious, commercially minded and interested in the why behind what you're building. Most importantly, you want to create AI that people actually use — and that makes a meaningful difference. If you’re a hands-on AI engineer who wants to build the future of AI-powered learning - rather than simply support it - this is an opportunity worth exploring.