Lead AI Engineer

Publicis Groupe UK; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading marketing technology firm in London is seeking an experienced Technical Engineering Lead to design AI/LLM-powered solutions. This role involves mentoring a team while ensuring scalable, high-performance applications crucial for clients' marketing success. The ideal candidate is skilled in full-stack development, cloud systems, and possesses strong leadership abilities. This position offers competitive benefits and the opportunity to work in a hybrid environment.

Benefits

WORK YOUR WORLD opportunity

REFLECTION DAYS

HELP@HAND BENEFITS

FAMILY FRIENDLY POLICIES

BIRTHDAY DAY OFF

GREAT LOCAL DISCOUNTS

Qualifications

• Proven experience in full-stack application development.
• Experience building LLM-powered applications.
• Strong background in Agile development methodologies.
• Expertise in cloud-based application development.
• Experience leading full-stack application development teams.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python.
• Familiarity with asynchronous queues.
• Understanding of cloud infrastructure.
• Knowledge of data lake architectures.
• Advocacy for clean code principles.

Responsibilities

• Guide a team of engineers in developing applications focused on LLMs and AI.
• Own the technical roadmap aligned with product strategy.
• Design and implement robust agentic workflows.
• Drive the technical direction ensuring modularity and scalability.
• Provide mentorship to team members.
• Conduct code reviews and enforce coding standards.
• Identify and address technical debt in systems.
• Collaborate with product managers for technical solutions.
• Research advancements in LLMs and AI technologies.

Skills

Full-stack application development

LLMs and AI

Agile processes

Cloud-based application development

Leading development teams

Python

Asynchronous queues

Cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP)

Data lake architectures

Containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes)

Clean code principles

Software design principles

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field

Tools

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Job description

Overview

About the Role
We are seeking a passionate and experienced Technical Engineering Lead to join our extended team. This individual will play a crucial role in designing and implementing AI/LLM-powered agentic workflow solutions, working closely with our Product Lead, Stakeholders, and Specialists.

Our application suite helps Publicis Groupe Performance experts drive holistic search, social, programmatic, and commerce marketing strategies for our global clients. Global teams use our applications to improve their performance results and save money on search, social, programmatic, and commerce marketing. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to a suite of products with a significant roadmap of features to be developed.

Your Impact
This role blends deep technical expertise with leadership and a passion for AI/LLM-powered solutions. You will be designing the engines powering our platform's success while fostering the growth and expertise of your team. Your deep understanding of scalable, efficient, full-stack cloud systems and expertise in modular, distributed, asynchronous architecture will directly translate into enhanced performance, reliability, and scalability for our applications. This leads to real-world impact, ultimately contributing to the success of our clients' marketing campaigns. You will also play a key role in mentoring and guiding your team members, helping them develop their skills and reach their full potential. This is an opportunity to make a significant impact on the technical direction of our platform, nurture engineering talent, and contribute to the growth of our business.

Responsibilities

• Guide a team of engineers in developing applications that empower our clients to optimize marketing campaigns through data-driven insights and automated actions, with a specific focus on leveraging LLMs and AI
• Own the technical roadmap for your team, aligning it with the overall product strategy and business objectives, ensuring alignment with the company's vision for agentic AI/LLM-powered workflows
• Design, develop, and implement robust and scalable agentic workflows utilizing LLMs and AI for various marketing applications, including:
  • Automated content generation, optimization, and personalization
  • Predictive analytics for campaign performance and optimization
  • Customer journey orchestration and personalized messaging
  • Real-time data analysis and actionable insights generation
• Drive the technical direction of the team, ensuring solutions are built with a focus on modularity, scalability, and maintainability, specifically in the context of AI/LLM-powered systems
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to team members, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous learning
• Conduct code reviews, enforce coding standards, and ensure the delivery of high-quality, maintainable code that adheres to best practices for AI/LLM and distributed system development
• Proactively identify and address technical debt and performance bottlenecks, particularly within the context of distributed, asynchronous systems handling large datasets
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions, ensuring that AI/LLM capabilities are effectively integrated into the product vision.
• Lead team grooming sessions, asking questions to clarify meaning and intent, and propose deliverable slices of functionality to provide benefit to users in the shortest amount of time
• Research and stay abreast of the latest advancements and best practices in LLMs, AI, and related technologies, evaluating their applicability to our business challenges and identifying opportunities to integrate them into our platform

Qualifications

• Relevant experience in full-stack application development
• Demonstrable experience working with LLMs and/or AI, demonstrated through previous projects showcasing proficiency in building AI/LLM-powered applications
• Extensive experience working in teams using Agile processes, including emphasis on the importance of testing and iterating on features in development, and experience in breaking Epics into deliverable slices of functionality
• Experience in cloud-based application development, designing and implementing modular, distributed, and asynchronous systems
• Solid experience leading full-stack application development teams
• Expert-level proficiency in Python and hands-on experience with at least one LLM based framework (LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, LlamaIndex, Qdrant, etc..)
• Strong experience with asynchronous queues (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ) and asynchronous APIs
• Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP) and experience deploying and managing applications at scale
• Strong understanding of data lake architectures, including experience with data ingestion, storage, processing, and retrieval of large volumes of structured and unstructured data
• Familiarity with containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes
• Strong advocate for clean code principles, testing methodologies (unit, integration, TDD, etc.), and CI/CD pipelines
• Solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to effectively convey technical concepts to both technical and nontechnical audiences

• Bonus Points
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field
  • Understanding of performance marketing concepts and strategies
  • Understand the data flows and dependencies within performance marketing campaigns
  • Contributions to open source projects

Additional information

Publicis Media has fantastic benefits on offer to all of our employees. In addition to the classics, Pension, Life Assurance, Private Medical and Income Protection Planswe also offer;

• WORK YOUR WORLD opportunity to work anywhere in the world, where there is a Publicis office, for up to 6 weeks a year.
• REFLECTION DAYS - Two additional days of paid leave to step away from your usual day-to-day work and create time to focus on your well-being and self-care.
• HELP@HAND BENEFITS 24/7 helpline to support you on a personal and professional level. Access to remote GPs, mental health support and CBT. Wellbeing content and lifestyle coaching.
• FAMILY FRIENDLY POLICIES We provide 26 weeks of full pay for the following family milestones: Maternity. Adoption, Surrogacy and Shared Parental Leave.
• FLEXIBLE WORKING, BANK HOLIDAY SWAP & BIRTHDAY DAY OFF You are entitled to an additional day off for your birthday, from your first day of employment.
• GREAT LOCAL DISCOUNTS This includes membership discounts with Soho Friends, local restaurants and retailers in Westfield White City and Television Centre.

Full details of our benefits will be shared when you join us!

Publicis Groupe operates a hybrid working pattern with full time employees being office-based three days during the working week.

We are supportive of all candidates and are committed to providing a fair assessment process. If you have any circumstances (such as neurodiversity, physical or mental impairments or a medical condition) that may affect your assessment, please inform your Talent Acquisition Partner. We will discuss possible adjustments to ensure fairness. Rest assured, disclosing this information will not impact your treatment in our process.

Please make sure you check out the Publicis Career Page which showcases our Inclusive Benefits and our EAG\'s (Employee Action Groups).