Lead AI Engineer

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