Senior AI​/ML Engineer

AI-First Digital Transformation at Salford City Council

Salford City Council is on a mission to harness the power of AI and data to reimagine public services for the future. As part of our newly formed AI team, you’ll support the design, development and deployment of intelligent solutions that improve the lives of residents and create a fairer, greener, and healthier Salford.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced engineer or developer to build and integrate AI/ML technology with meaningful results, while working in a supportive team. You will work closely with the Senior AI/ML Engineer and wider digital teams to turn innovative ideas into working solutions using Microsoft Azure as our core platform.

You’ll contribute across the AI/ML lifecycle, preparing data, building and deploying models, and integrating solutions into council systems. Your previous experience with development and delivery in enterprise and cloud platforms will be invaluable, as will your problem solving and collaboration skills, in addressing challenges and opportunities. In this role, you’ll build your skills in AI/ML engineering, Azure cloud services and other tool chains, and responsible AI practices and ethics.

If you’re passionate about the next wave of digital transformation and want to become an expert in emerging AI technology, want to apply your development expertise to solve real-world challenges and want to see your work make a tangible impact on society, this role is for you.

• Design, develop and deploy AI/ML solutions within Azure Machine Learning and Azure AI Foundry, integrating with other platforms and applications.
• Assist with model training, evaluation, and deployment, applying established frameworks and tools.
• Support the creation of pipelines for data preparation, model testing, and monitoring.

• Support establishment of the council’s target architecture and AI development toolchain, with an initial focus on Azure AI Foundry, Azure Integration Services, and Azure ML pipelines.
• Employ MLOps practices (CI/CD, model versioning, retraining pipelines) aligned with Azure-native tooling.
• Support evaluation and experimentation with open-source frameworks (Lang Chain, Llama Index, PyTorch, Hugging Face) and other platforms (AWS Sage Maker, OCI Data Science) where relevant.

• Work closely with the Senior AI/ML Engineer, architects, and service teams to understand requirements and translate them into working solutions.
• Communicate progress clearly, escalating challenges where needed.
• Share knowledge with peers and take part in internal learning activities.

• Support development of policies for data governance, security, and responsible AI use.
• Support the documentation of AI solutions, ensuring transparency and reproducibility.
• Contribute to testing and monitoring for data quality, accuracy, and bias.
• Stay current with emerging AI research, frameworks, and platform feature releases.
• Take part in proofs of concept to evaluate new approaches, frameworks, and models.
• Contribute to building an internal culture of innovation, sharing knowledge and best practices across the organisation.
• Evaluate technology and platform options during discovery phases, producing cost-benefit analyses that inform investment decisions including justifying higher-cost solutions where the strategic or operational benefit is demonstrable.
• Take ownership of cost optimisation across deployed applications, cloud infrastructure and AI/ML resources, proactively identifying inefficiencies and implementing improvements.
• Monitor and report on Azure consumption and cloud resource expenditure on a regular basis, providing spend visibility to the Senior AI/ML Engineer and Digital leadership.
• Contribute to budget planning cycles for AI/ML tooling, licensing and infrastructure, providing spend forecasts based on usage projections and architectural decisions.

• Proven experience designing, developing, and deploying solutions in production environments.
• Strong familiarity with Python (pandas, Num Py, scikit-learn,…