AI Engineer

AI Engineer Software Engineering background is required London, UK | Hybrid - 3 days in office - 12-month contract (Inside IR35) Daily rate: £700 - £950 p/d inside IR35 We are seeking an AI Engineer with Software Engineering background to join a fast-moving team working across AI platform engineering and direct collaboration with business teams. The role is split approximately 60/40 between platform engineering and business-facing AI delivery, focusing on building and deploying production-grade AI solutions. We are looking for someone who writes clean, production-quality code and can turn AI capability into real business impact. Key Responsibilities Responsibilities * Design, build and maintain core AI platform components - LLM gateway, MCP connector layer, observability tooling, and privacy Proxy * Develop and harden MCP connectors across data sources * Build AI-powered tools and workflows for business teams, translating use cases into governed, production-ready applications * Integrate with Databricks/Unity Catalog as the data foundation for AI features * Contribute to spec-driven development practices - writing clear specifications before building, with appropriate test coverage * Support prompt engineering, evaluation, and iterative improvement of deployed AI features * Collaborate with the engineering squad to displace outsourced delivery with in-house capability Skills/Experience * Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI or similar) in production environments * Experience building AI Solutions is essential * Experience with agentic frameworks, tool use, and MCP or equivalent connector patterns desirable * Familiarity with observability and evaluation tooling for AI systems * Understanding of data platforms - Databricks or similar - and how to expose data safely to LLMs * Security and governance awareness: prompt injection, data boundary controls, RBAC * Comfortable working in a small, high-trust team where you own things end to end * Python development skills is essential * Financial services or regulated environment experience