Hands-on Lead AI Engineer for Public Sector Systems

scrumconnect ltd; Walbottle; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Scrumconnect Consulting is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to drive hands-on development of AI components within a large-scale government AI Operating Model programme. You will design, implement, and ship production-grade AI capabilities—RAG pipelines, semantic search, and LLM orchestration—integrated into multi-cloud, secure data environments across the UK.

You will lead the squad's engineering practice, set standards, review designs, mentor engineers, and enforce Responsible AI, security, and

Qualifications

• Writing production-grade, well-tested code across AI components.
• Designing components that integrate into larger architectures.
• Building reliable data pipelines for AI consumption.
• Implementing CI/CD, IaC, and automated deployment for AI workloads.
• Creating evaluation harnesses for AI quality, bias checks and guardrails.
• Diagnosing complex issues under production pressure.
• Delivering iteratively within a blended government-facing team.

Responsibilities

• Hands-on build and delivery of AI components (RAG pipelines, embedding infrastructure, orchestration).
• Lead engineering practice within the squad: coding standards, PR reviews, mentoring.
• Implement guardrails for Responsible AI (bias checks, evaluation harnesses, human-in-the-loop).
• Ensure security, observability, and reliable production deployments for sensitive data.
• Transfer knowledge to civil servants via Docs-as-Code and cohort activities.
• Promote sustainable, low-modality designs aligned to Green IT commitments.

Skills

Coding and Scripting

Systems Design

Data Engineering

DevOps/CD

Testing & Evaluation

Problem Solving

Agile Working

Python

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Job description

Scrumconnect Consulting is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to drive hands-on development of AI components within a large-scale government AI Operating Model programme. You will design, implement, and ship production-grade AI capabilities—RAG pipelines, semantic search, and LLM orchestration—integrated into multi-cloud, secure data environments across the UK.

You will lead the squad's engineering practice, set standards, review designs, mentor engineers, and enforce Responsible AI, security, and