Lead AI Engineer

About TalentCo and the Role

TalentCo is excited to partner with an innovative AI startup seeking a high-calibre Lead AI Engineer to join their rapidly expanding engineering team in the UK. This company recently secured significant seed funding, propelling their growth and ambitious vision.

This pivotal role is for a senior individual contributor who will be instrumental in shaping the technical direction of the company. While the startup is headquartered in London, this position offers a remote-first work arrangement anywhere within the UK, with occasional team gatherings at the London HQ.

As the Lead AI Engineer, you will be the resident AI expert, driving the technical evolution of the client's AI-first platform. You'll be a core software engineer, focused on architecting intricate systems that bring AI effectively into production. Your time will be dedicated to crafting complex AI processing architectures, hands-on data and backend engineering, and ensuring successful delivery of AI-powered solutions.

Key Responsibilities of a Lead AI Engineer

• Architect & Engineer AI Systems: Beyond just calling APIs, you will design and build robust processing architectures. This involves leveraging off-the-shelf Large Language Models (LLMs), implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, and applying sophisticated context engineering to solve challenging problems. Rigorous benchmarking will be key to ensure these systems deliver actual performance, not just perceived intelligence.
• Build the Backend Foundation: You will spend substantial time utilizing Python (with frameworks like FastAPI and SQLAlchemy) to develop the APIs, data structures, and services that power the product. Your engineering expertise will ensure the AI functionality is delivered on reliable, production-grade infrastructure.
• Close the Data Loop: As products launch, you will spearhead the transition from initial 'zero-shot' implementations to data-driven optimization. This includes instrumenting data collection, designing effective online evaluation metrics, and deploying simple yet impactful Machine Learning models (e.g., logistic regression, boosted trees) to optimize user outcomes based on real-world feedback.
• Mentor & Lead: You will collaborate with and upskill full-stack engineers, imparting essential AI concepts and best practices. As a 'from-the-trenches' expert, you'll guide the team in distinguishing between industry hype and engineering reality.
• Strategically Advise: You will provide critical guidance to Product and Leadership teams, helping them navigate the landscape of valuable opportunities and technical possibilities. This involves steering the product roadmap towards features that achieve tangible business impact through data-driven optimization.

What TalentCo is Looking For

• Production Engineering (5+ years): You are fundamentally a strong software engineer with extensive experience in building and maintaining backend services using Python (preferably FastAPI or similar async frameworks). Experience deploying to modern cloud providers (GCP/AWS) or point solutions (Railway, Render, Vercel) is highly desirable.
• Applied AI Architecture: Proven experience in constructing complex applications leveraging Foundation Models / LLMs. A deep understanding of context window management, effective prompting strategies, and chaining models for reliable results is crucial.
• Team-Oriented Mindset: Excellent communication skills are essential for clearly explaining complex technical ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences. A strong passion for collaborative work within cross-functional teams is also key.
• Passion and Pride in Shipping: A 'do-whatever-it-takes' attitude to successfully deliver against critical business goals, contributing to overall team success.
• Pragmatic Best Practices: A strong commitment to building efficient, scalable, and maintainable code, while skillfully balancing the tradeoffs between technical debt and delivery speed. A preference for shipping a functional heuristic today over a perfect model delivered weeks later.

What TalentCo Offers You

• Base salary around £150,000
• Remote-first work arrangement with occasional team trips to the London HQ
• Provision of Apple devices and access to the best AI tooling
• Meaningful early-stage share opportunities
• Significant career acceleration through real growth, genuine ownership, and impactful contributions

Key skills/competency

• AI Architecture
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• RAG Pipelines
• Python Programming
• FastAPI
• Backend Engineering
• Cloud Platforms (GCP/AWS)
• Data Optimization
• Machine Learning
• System Design