Forward-Deployed Principal AI Engineer

Ocho People; Belfast City District; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

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Job summary

Ocho People is seeking a Principal AI Engineer (Forward Deployed) to work directly with customers, embedding with teams to solve live operational problems using Python, large language models, and agentic workflows.

As the technical authority, you will define architectural patterns, drive retrieval and prompting strategies, and mentor engineers while delivering rapid, production-grade AI solutions in real-world settings.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building software or AI systems in production.
• Deep Python expertise and substantial hands-on large language model experience.
• Track record of shipping quickly in ambiguous, under-specified situations.
• Experience setting technical direction that other engineers then follow.
• Confident working directly with customers, including in operational settings.
• Eligible for UK security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Embed with customer teams to understand operational problems first hand.
• Build working AI solutions rapidly against real data and real constraints.
• Set the technical approach and architectural patterns used across deployments.
• Own the hardest problems, the ones nobody else has managed to crack.
• Design and tune retrieval, prompting and agent behaviour for demanding use cases.
• Establish the standard for how output quality is validated before it is relied upon.
• Convert successful deployments into repeatable product capability.
• Mentor senior engineers and act as the technical voice with senior customer stakeholders.

Skills

Python

LLMs

AI systems

Customer facing

Architecture leadership

Security clearance

Job description

Ocho People is seeking a Principal AI Engineer (Forward Deployed) to work directly with customers, embedding with teams to solve live operational problems using Python, large language models, and agentic workflows.

As the technical authority, you will define architectural patterns, drive retrieval and prompting strategies, and mentor engineers while delivering rapid, production-grade AI solutions in real-world settings.