Lead AI Consultant

Softwire; Greater London; On-site; GBP 67,700 - 88,700; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days annual leave

Health insurance

Cycle to work scheme

Job summary

Softwire, located in Cambridge, is seeking a Lead AI Consultant to transform AI capabilities into practical software solutions. You will work as a senior technical leader within multidisciplinary teams, guiding clients on integrating AI effectively. Candidates should have a strong engineering background, leadership skills, and a practical approach to applying AI in development. The role offers a salary of £67,700-£88,700 plus profit share, with additional benefits including 25 days annual leave and a supportive work culture.

Qualifications

• Significant experience building and shipping production software.
• Can lead technical direction on projects and help teams make trade-offs.
• Experience applying AI in real teams effectively.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver AI-enabled software with multidisciplinary teams.
• Advise clients on where AI adds value while coaching engineers.
• Contribute to internal capability building through patterns and reusable approaches.

Skills

Senior engineering capability

Technical leadership

AI tooling experience

Strong engineering fundamentals

Confidence with AI uncertainty

Job description

Salary: £67,700-£88,700 with an average of between £8,500 - £15,250 in profit share

Softwire is a leading UK technology and strategy consultancy. From enterprise to government, we help visionary organisations turn strategic ambitions into results at scale. Our practices cover AI transformation, data platforms, systems engineering advanced CX and experience design.

Softwire was founded on one simple idea: if we can create the best possible culture and working environment then everything else will fall into place. And it seems to be working – We were recently voted number 1 company to work for in the UK at the Best Company awards, and we have a loyal and growing client base who trust us with their hardest problems and their mission critical projects.

We focus on creating a great culture and working environment and we are looking for people who share our core beliefs about what makes a great place to work:

• That if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.
• That work should be fulfilling but can also be fun.
• That kindness matters and should be extended to employees and clients alike.
• That by being trusting and trustworthy as an organisation and as individuals we can dispense with tedious bureaucracy and rules.

When you work with Softwire, you’re not only becoming part of a team with in-depth technical skills and delivery expertise – you’ll be working in a high-trust environment alongside skilled, kind, fun people who are passionate about creating amazing services and experiences that solve real problems.

In brief

Softwire is looking for a Lead AI Consultant to help our clients turn the current wave of AI capability (especially LLMs) into real, valuable, maintainable software.

This role is for a strong senior engineer / tech lead type who can bring AI into delivery teams in two ways:

• Using AI tooling to improve engineering productivity across whole teams (e.g. coding assistants, test generation, code review support, documentation acceleration, internal dev workflows)
• Building products and platforms that incorporate AI/LLM features, safely and pragmatically

While a detailed scientific understanding of ML and AI theory is helpful, the primary goal is delivery: shipping the right thing, safely, with modern engineering practices.

The role

As a Lead AI Consultant, you’ll operate as a senior technical leader on client work, helping teams move from “AI curiosity” to working, production‑grade solutions.

You will:

• Work hands‑on within multidisciplinary teams to design and deliver AI‑enabled software
• Help clients make the right calls on where AI adds value (and where it doesn’t)
• Use, advise on, and develop AI‑related features such as:
  • Intelligent search / retrieval experiences and RAG
  • Summarisation and document comprehension at scale
  • Context management
  • AI agents, MCP servers, and best‑practice configuration of, for example, AGENTS.md
  • Advanced use of tools such as Claude Code and Codex
  • Assistants and copilots embedded into workflows
  • Classification, extraction, and decision support tooling
  • Retraining and fine‑tuning models
  • Trade‑offs between different models (including open models)
  • Calculation / forecasting of token usage
  • Vector databases
  • Well‑formed opinions on and experience of AI‑enhanced SDLCs
• Set teams up for sustainable success through:
  • Strong engineering practices (testing, CI/CD, observability, quality)
  • Clear system boundaries and maintainable architecture
  • Safe and secure deployment patterns for AI components at scale
  • AI performance, accuracy, and reliability monitoring through evals
• Coach and upskill client engineers on pragmatic, safe adoption of AI tools and techniques
• Keeping yourself and your team up‑to‑date on the latest AI techniques and technology
• Contribute to Softwire’s internal capability building: patterns, accelerators, reusable approaches, and a strong culture of “learning by building”

This is a role where engineering leadership matters not just experimenting with AI, but integrating it into systems responsibly, with teams who need to operate and extend it long after go‑live.

You’re a strong senior software engineer / tech lead who can take ownership of technical delivery end‑to‑end, working hands‑on while also guiding others. You bring credibility with both engineers and stakeholders, and you’re comfortable being the person who turns ambiguity into momentum.

Your experience and strengths include:

• Senior engineering capability
  You have significant experience building and shipping production software, and you’re confident working across architecture, implementation, deployment, and operational support. You care about maintainability and long‑term ownership as much as delivery speed.
• Technical leadership and delivery ownership
  You can lead technical direction on a project: choosing appropriate patterns, establishing standards, helping teams make trade‑offs, and ensuring work is built in a way that scales. You take responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks.
• Practical experience applying AI in real teams
  You’re enthusiastic about bringing AI into development teams in ways that genuinely stick, including both:
  • AI tooling to support development (e.g. coding assistants, test generation, refactoring support, documentation acceleration, internal workflows)
  • Building products that incorporate AI/LLM features (e.g. assistants/coplots, summarisation, document understanding, semantic search/RAG, extraction, classification, decision support, workflow automation)
• Strong engineering fundamentals
  You build with the discipline needed to keep software reliable and maintainable, including:
  • automated testing strategies (unit/integration/e2e where appropriate)
  • good CI/CD hygiene and code review practicesclean boundaries and readable, extensible code
  • observability and operational readiness (logging, monitoring, failure modes)
• Confidence working with AI uncertainty and risk
  You understand that AI systems behave differently to deterministic software, and you build with that reality in mind — designing for predictable behaviour, graceful degradation, and appropriate safeguards. You’re able to explain limitations clearly and manage risk responsibly.

Your approach to the role:

You bring a strong balance of AI/engineering and client skills.

With clients you are great at bridging the gap between business needs and technical approaches. Your familiarity with the current AI landscape, focus on client needs and ability to innovate enables you to quickly establish yourself as a trusted advisor.

In your approach to technical delivery, you are pragmatic, product‑minded, and outcomes‑driven. You don’t treat AI as a novelty — you treat it as an engineering capability that should be applied carefully, with measurable value.

That means you:

• Start with user and business outcomes, and can challenge whether AI is the right approach
• Prefer simple, testable, production‑ready solutions over fragile prototypes
• Build AI‑enabled features in a way that teams can confidently own and improve over time
• Work iteratively: short feedback loops, real user testing, and continuous learning
• Raise capability across teams by coaching, pairing, and sharing patterns

Softwire operates transparent pay scales and a profit share scheme based on role and overall company performance.

• Base salary from £67,700-£88,700 depending on your background and how many years of relevant experience you have.
• You can expect to receive a profit share depending on your experience and company performance. Over the last three years, this ranged between £8,500 – £15,250.
• Pension: Additional 5% of salary

Additional benefits

25 days annual leave (with the option to buy and sell), time off for company‑wide morale activities, time off for charitable / CSR activities, free annual eye test, and opt‑in health insurance, cycle to work scheme, and payroll charity donations.

We are there for our clients and colleagues when needed. On average our teams do this working in person 3 days a week. We welcome applications from those with additional needs or caring responsibilities and will look at where adaptions can support success in the role.