Contract - Principal AI Engineer

JR United Kingdom; London; Hybrid; GBP 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A major financial player is seeking a Principal AI Engineer/Data Scientist to join their high-impact AI R&D team in London. The role involves working at the forefront of LLMs and engaging in the development of AI-driven tools primarily focusing on research automation and decision support. Candidates should have strong Python and AI experience and be open to learning about finance.

Qualifications

• Strong background in Python and commercial AI experience.
• Experience with LLMs and strong understanding of AI-driven tools.
• Willingness to learn about investment data.

Responsibilities

• Work on cutting-edge LLMs and prototype AI-driven tools.
• Experiment with Python and validate concepts for engineering teams.
• Collaborate in a fast-paced environment with stakeholders.

Skills

Python for AI/ML

LLMs

Agent frameworks

Prompt engineering

AWS

Job description

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Contract - Principal AI Engineer, london

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Client:

Source Technology

Location:

london, United Kingdom

Job Category:

Other

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EU work permit required:

Yes

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Job Views:

5

Posted:

16.06.2025

Expiry Date:

31.07.2025

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Job Description:

Principal AI Engineer/ Data Scientist

Contract - inside IR35

London - hybrid

£700-£900 inside IR35 (potential flex, focus in on the right person)

Join a high-impact AI R&D team at a major financial player, where you'll be working at the cutting edge of LLMs and agentic workflows in the investment space. The team partners with front office users to prototype AI-driven tools for research automation, portfolio construction, and decision support.

This is an R&D-focused role where you’ll be experimenting with Python, LangGraph (or similar), vector databases, and prompt orchestration to prove out what's possible - then handing off validated concepts to engineering teams for scale-up.

They’re open to either data scientists or engineers with strong Python and AI experience. You’ll need to be comfortable working in a fast-paced, collaborative environment and able to bridge technical experimentation with real investment use cases. If you have finance experience, that's great, but no worries if not, as long as you're willing to learn and engage with senior stakeholders.

Key experience:

• Python for AI/ML, automation, or backend work
• Hands-on with LLMs, agent frameworks, or prompt engineering
• Exposure to investment data or a willingness to learn quickly
• AWS (or similar cloud) and rapid prototyping mindset
• Front-end exposure (e.g. React) is a nice-to-have but not required

If you're an experienced engineer or scientist with a strong background in Python and commercial AI experience get in touch.