AI / Agent Engineer

Socket.dev; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Appnovation Technologies seeks an experienced AI Builder to design and evolve MCP servers, graph-RAG pipelines, and agent tooling. You will work with product, data and QA to improve factual grounding and answer quality in fast-moving LLM environments.

The role emphasizes hands-on Python development, cross-functional collaboration, and production-grade software engineering practices in an agile setting.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years in software engineering, with 2+ years in AI/ML or LLM-based apps.
• Strong Python and hands-on LLM development expertise.
• Experience building MCP servers, tools and skills.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve MCP servers, tools, and skills that expose the platform to multiple LLMs (e.g., Claude, Gemini).
• Design and refine the graph-RAG pipeline that transforms documents into agent-friendly representations of facts, entities, and relationships.
• Implement retrieval across multiple tiers (source document, vector-RAG, dense graph) and temporal replay.
• Partner with QA on eval-driven improvements to answer quality and factual grounding.
• Write clean, well-tested, production-grade code and participate in code reviews.
• Collaborate closely with product, data, and QA in an agile/sprint model.
• Document designs, prompts, and tool interfaces for maintainability and handover.
• Monitor deployed agents/models, troubleshoot issues, and iterate on performance.
• Stay current with the fast-moving LLM/agent tooling landscape.

Skills

Python

LLM application development

Agentic patterns

MCP servers

RAG systems

Graph databases

Git

Testing

CI/CD

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Tools

Neo4j

Postgres/Supabase

Git

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

About us

Appnovation is a global, full-service digital partner that combines Strategy, Experience & Design, Engineering and Managed Services. We build digital solutions that deliver real impact today and serve as foundations for future growth. Bold ambition. Practical action. Endless possibilities.

Technology is foundational to all of Appnovation’s offerings, from consulting to digital innovation, to digital product and service creation. The technology department is focused on delivering software solutions that enable rich consumer experiences, from mobile and web applications to advanced analytics and machine learning, to content and engagement management service enablement platforms.

Inherent throughout our tech capabilities is deep expertise in the Software Development Life Cycle, a drive for creativity, a passion for the craft, and collaboration with other disciplines - all foundational ingredients in successful digital experiences and client partnerships.

As an AI / Agent Engineer — an “AI Builder” — you will join a highly motivated and experienced team at the core of every pod, building and evolving the agentic layer of our platform. You will craft the MCP servers, tools, skills and graph-RAG pipelines that make documents intelligible to multiple large language models, and partner with product, data and QA to continuously raise answer quality and factual grounding. We are looking for people who bring a strong, solution-focused mindset, thrive amid fast-moving AI tooling, and get things done.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Build and evolve MCP servers, tools, and skills that expose the platform to multiple LLMs (e.g., Claude, Gemini).
• Design and refine the graph-RAG pipeline that transforms documents into agent-friendly representations of facts, entities, and relationships.
• Implement retrieval across multiple tiers (source document, vector-RAG, dense graph) and temporal replay.
• Partner with QA on eval-driven improvements to answer quality and factual grounding.
• Write clean, well-tested, production-grade code and participate in code reviews.
• Collaborate closely with product, data, and QA in an agile/sprint model.
• Document designs, prompts, and tool interfaces for maintainability and handover.
• Monitor deployed agents/models, troubleshoot issues, and iterate on performance.
• Stay current with the fast-moving LLM/agent tooling landscape.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with 2+ years in AI/ML or LLM-based applications.
• Strong Python, with hands‑on experience in LLM application development and agentic patterns.
• Direct experience building MCP servers, tools, and skills.
• Experience with RAG and graph-RAG systems, vector databases, and embeddings.
• Familiarity with graph data stores (Neo4j and/or Postgres/Supabase-based graph implementations).
• Comfortable working against multiple LLM providers (e.g., Claude, Gemini).
• Solid software engineering fundamentals: version control (Git), testing, and CI/CD.
• Strong problem-solving and communication skills, with the ability to work independently in ambiguity.

WHO YOU ARE

• You think about how to scale, automate and operate, not just how to build a solution to an immediate problem
• You understand lean thinking
• You set high standards for code quality, performance/scalability and security and seek continuous improvement
• You have solid analytical, problem solving and decision-making skills
• You have customer first mindset and a devotion to customer service
• You engage and build positive internal and external client relationships, while managing multiple initiatives, often with competing priorities
• You have strong self-initiative, passion, interpersonal, oral and written communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work, influence and make an impact in a cross‑functional environment with all levels of the organization
• You are responsive and thrive in a fast‑paced diverse high-performance environment with rapidly changing business needs
• You actively seek out things outside your comfort zone with the ability to rapidly learn and take advantage of new concepts, business models, and technologies
• You have prior experience in consulting
• Prior experience and connections in the Life Sciences industry is preferred

Thank you for your interest in a career with Appnovation Technologies! Please note that only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

At Appnovation, we recognize that diverse teams are the strongest teams. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is not only something that we embrace - we celebrate it! We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and we encourage applicants from all backgrounds, lived experiences and industries to apply. Come join us at Appnovation, and learn more about how we stay true to our company values as we build better lives through better digital.

Accommodations are available upon request throughout the recruitment process.