Data and AI - AI Engineer

Wavestone; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Income protection insurance

5% company pension

Private health and dental cover

Life insurance

Company share scheme

25 days annual leave

Flexible benefits

Job summary

Wavestone UK is hiring for a senior Data & AI practitioner to lead and deliver large-scale AI transformations for FTSE100 and enterprise clients. You will shape strategy, design, and deployment of production AI, mentor a growing team, and contribute to our thought leadership.

The role requires deep technical and communication skills to bridge business and technology, with travel to client sites and offices in London and beyond.

Qualifications

• Proven experience building AI/LLM-powered applications in production.
• Deep understanding of AI/GenAI fundamentals, including model behaviour, limitations, and evaluation.
• Experience designing and implementing: RAG systems; Agentic workflows / multi-step reasoning systems; Tool-using AI applications.
• Strong system design and architecture skills (APIs, data pipelines, distributed systems).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Ability to make technical trade-offs (cost, latency, accuracy, scalability).
• Experience working in client-facing or consulting environments, as well as leading teams and projects.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience across multiple AI platforms (e.g., Claude, GPT, open-source models).
• Familiarity with orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.).
• Experience optimising AI systems for performance, cost, and reliability.
• Knowledge of enterprise architecture and regulated environments.
• Experience with AI agents, copilots, or automation systems.
• Exposure to AI governance, safety, and responsible AI practices.
• Contributions to thought leadership, open-source, or internal capability building.

Responsibilities

• Business Development: Act as a trusted subject-matter expert in AI engineering and GenAI during pre-sales and sales activity; shape solutions, proposals, and go-to-market initiatives.
• Thought Leadership & Proposition Ownership: Shape AI and GenAI propositions; contribute to thought leadership through articles and events; develop accelerators and playbooks.
• People Development: Mentor consultants and engineers; share best practices and provide technical guidance; contribute to career development within the practice.
• Maintain Expertise: Stay at the forefront of AI/GenAI; explore new technologies and patterns to enhance client delivery and internal capability.

Skills

AI/LLM in prod

GenAI fundamentals

RAG systems

Agentic workflows

Tool-using AI

System architecture

Cloud platforms

Trade-offs

Client-facing

Communication skills

Multiple AI platforms

Orchestration frameworks

Performance optimization

Enterprise architecture

AI agents

Governance & safety

Thought leadership

Job description

Be part of a global consulting powerhouse, partnering with clients on their most critical strategic transformations.

We are Wavestone. Energetic, solution-driven experts who focus as much on people as on performance and growth. Hand in hand, we share a deep desire to make a positive impact.We are an ambitious firm with a worldwide reach and an ever-expanding portfolio of clients, topics, and projects.

Recognized by the Financial Times as one of the UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2025, Wavestone UK now boasts a team of 200 employees, with ambitions to rapidly grow in the coming years. Our services span business and digital transformation, cybersecurity, operational improvement, risk advisory, and IT advisory. We exist to provide end-to-end expert advice to clients across industries, with a particular focus on Insurance, Financial Services and Life Sciences – helping them to positively transform into modern, innovative organizations that thrive in a sustainable way.

In 2025, we received the UK’s Great Place to Work accreditation, and we are proud to have been recognized in the following Best Workplaces categories: Large Organizations, Wellbeing, Development and Best Workplace for Women.

Are you a true team player, living strong values? Are you a passionate learner, aiming to grow every day? Are you a driven go-getter, tackling challenges head‑on? Then we could be the right fit for you.

Join Wavestone and thrive in an environment that’s empowering, collaborative, and full of opportunities to turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s solutions.

Job Description

JoiningWavestone’sUKData & AI Service Lineoffers the opportunity to help shape large-scale AI and data transformations for FTSE100 organisations and enterprise clients. Our team is rapidly growing as clients increasingly rely on us to design, build, and scale modern AI solutions across their organisations.

You will be part of a high-performing consulting and engineering team delivering both advisory and hands‑on implementation across AI strategy, AI engineering, GenAI solutions, and modern AI architecture patterns.

This role is intentionallyplatform-agnostic. While experience with tools such as Anthropic Claude, OpenAI models (e.g. Codex / GPT), and other frontier or open‑source LLMs is valuable, we are primarily looking for individuals whounderstand core AI engineering principles and can apply them across ecosystems.

This is an ideal role for someone who combines:

Deep technical and coding capability, with the ability to communicate complex concepts clearly to non-technical audiences

Strong understanding ofAI/GenAI systems and architecture

Experience buildingagentic, production‑grade AI solutions

The ability tooperateacross the full lifecycle:fromstrategytodesigntobuildtodeployandscale

As a senior member of the Data & AI practice, your key responsibilities will cover client delivery, business development, people development, and key contribution to our thought leadership. Depending on your level of experience you will be expected to:

• Business Development: Act as a trusted subject‑matter expert in AI engineering and GenAI during pre‑sales and sales activity. You will help identify opportunities, shape solution approaches, and contribute to proposals, RFP responses, and go‑to‑market initiatives. You will also develop compelling demos, prototypes, and technical narratives that demonstrate the value and feasibility of modern AI solutions, supporting the growth of Wavestone’s Data & AI footprint across key accounts.
  
• Thought Leadership & Proposition Ownership: Play a key role in shaping Wavestone’s AI and GenAI propositions, bringing forward innovative approaches to agentic systems, retrieval architectures, evaluation frameworks, and enterprise AI engineering. You will contribute to thought leadership through articles, insights, and event participation, and help develop reusable accelerators, toolkits, and playbooks that address common client challenges. Your work will strengthen our market presence and help position Wavestone as a leader in practical, scalable AI delivery.
  
• People Development: Support the growth of our Data & AI community by mentoring consultants and engineers, sharing best practice, and providing technical guidance across architecture, engineering, and delivery. You will help build internal capability through knowledge‑sharing, training, and the development of reusable methodologies and frameworks. Where appropriate, you may also contribute to line management and career development within the practice.
  
• Maintain Expertise: Stay at the forefront of the rapidly evolving AI/GenAI landscape, maintaining deep expertise in LLMs, agentic systems, RAG patterns, evaluation techniques, and cloud‑native AI tooling. You will continuously explore emerging technologies and engineering patterns, bringing forward new ideas that enhance client delivery and strengthen Wavestone’s internal capability.

Qualifications

Core Skills & Experience

Proven experience building AI/LLM-powered applications in production

Deep understanding of AI/GenAI fundamentals, including model behaviour, limitations, and evaluation

Experience designing and implementing:

RAG systems

Agentic workflows / multi-step reasoning systems

Tool-using AI applications

Strong systemdesign and architecture skills (APIs, data pipelines, distributed systems)

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Ability to make technical trade-offs (cost, latency, accuracy, scalability)

Experience working in client-facing or consulting environments, as well as leadingteams andprojects

Strong communicationand stakeholder management skills

Experience across multiple AI platforms (e.g., Claude, GPT, open-source models)

Familiarity with orchestration frameworks (LangChain,LlamaIndex, etc.)

Experience optimising AI systems for performance, cost, and reliability

Knowledge of enterprise architecture and regulated environments

Experience with AI agents, copilots, or automation systems

Exposure to AI governance, safety, and responsible AI practices

Contributions to thought leadership, open-source, or internal capability building

Additional Information

Our commitment:Wavestone values and Positive Way

Elevateclient satisfactionby impacting high-growth business across US, UK, and Europe. Shape culture, enhance value propositions, and foster business development.

Nurtureemployee growthwith Wavestone horizon career path, competitive compensation, transparent salary policy, tailored training, and internal mobility.

Embrace acollective mindsetwithin a barrier‑free, collaborative team. Engage in vibrant people culture through regular events, meetings, and committees.

Experienceethical responsibilitywith flexible work options, strong CSR commitment, and a culture promoting work‑life balance and time‑off.

Competitive salary and bonus scheme.

Income protection insurance, 5% company pension, private health and dental cover, life insurance, company share scheme.

Additional flexible benefits you can select from such as additional holidays, additional pension contributions, subsidized gym, subscriptions to wellbeing apps, Netflix, retail vouchers.

25 days annual leave.

Travel and Location

Employees are not required to work in a Wavestone office on a full‑time basis but are required to commute to the office /client site, whenever necessary. Wavestone UK office is in the heart of the city of London.

Note:Mandatory 2-3 days per week in Wavestone office / client site during probation.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Wavestone, we celebrate diversity and inclusion. We have a strong global CSR agenda and an active Diversity & Inclusion committee with Gender Equality, LGBTQ+, Disability Inclusion, Social Mobility and Anti‑Racism networks.

If you need flexibility, assistance, or an adjustment to our recruitment process due to a disability or impairment, please reach out to us to discuss this.