Senior AI Developer

About The Role

We have an exciting opportunity for a forward‑thinking Senior AI Developer to join our Technology team. You will lead on the design, development, and deployment of AI/ML solutions across our technology platform. A chance to be part of a high performing and dynamic team delivering effective, reliable IT solutions which satisfy customer needs and priorities.

This role operates within a Java‑based microservices ecosystem, with opportunities to work with modern AI/ML frameworks, cloud‑native AI services, and cutting‑edge LLM technologies. The position requires strong software engineering fundamentals combined with deep AI/ML expertise.

We support hybrid working, with regular presence required in our Bournemouth offices.

• Design and implement AI/ML solutions that integrate with microservices architecture, ensuring scalability and low‑latency performance.
• Build, train, optimise, and deploy production‑grade machine learning models for business use cases.
• Design, implement, and fine‑tune Large Language Model (LLM) solutions, including secure API integration and prompt engineering.
• Develop contract‑first, composable APIs to expose ML capabilities and support seamless integration.
• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines for ML models, enabling robust automation and monitoring.
• Build and manage scalable data pipelines and feature stores for ML training, inference, and real‑time streaming data.
• Implement data validation, quality checks, and ensure compliance with data protection regulations (e.g. GDPR).
• Set up comprehensive frameworks for model evaluation, monitoring, drift detection, and A/B testing.
• Build applications leveraging GPT, Claude, and other LLMs, including Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) systems for domain‑specific knowledge.
• Apply secure‑by‑default principles, remediate vulnerabilities, and ensure AI systems meet regulatory and ethical guidelines.
• Ensure secure handling of sensitive data, protect ML models from adversarial attacks and model extraction.
• Implement observability for AI/ML systems, including system metrics, logging, distributed tracing, and alerting for anomalies.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams, document technical work, and communicate progress and issues effectively.
• Identify and implement opportunities for process, tool, and standard improvements within the AI/ML lifecycle.
• Guide, train, and support junior team members, and provide technical leadership and support as required.

• Extensive professional software development and hands‑on ML engineering experience.
• Proven experience deploying ML models to production environments and mentoring junior developers.

• Expert‑level proficiency in Python for ML development; strong skills in Java (microservices), SQL (data analysis), and JavaScript/Type Script (full‑stack AI applications).
• Deep knowledge of ML/AI frameworks (Tensor Flow, PyTorch, JAX, scikit‑learn, XGBoost, Light
  
  GBM, Hugging Face Transformers).
• Experience with LLM frameworks and technologies (Lang Chain, Llama Index, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, vector databases).
• Skilled in microservices architecture, RESTful API design, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and version control (Git).
• Proficient with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and cloud ML services (Sage Maker, Vertex AI, Azure ML), including container orchestration (EKS, AKS, GKE).

• Experience with data processing frameworks (Apache Spark, Flink, Kafka), feature stores (Feast, Tecton), and data versioning tools (DVC, Dolt).
• Skilled in building scalable data pipelines, managing data quality, and ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations (GDPR).
• Proficient in MLOps tools (MLflow, Kubeflow, Weights & Biases), model serving frameworks, experiment tracking, and model registry management.

• Strong understanding of security vulnerabilities in ML systems, secure coding practices, data encryption, and ethical AI/bias mitigation.
• Experience with security scanning, vulnerability assessment tools, and compliance with regulatory standards (FCA, GDPR).
• Knowledge of observability…