Lead AI Engineer - End-to-End, Cloud-Native & Impactful

Department for Transport (DfT), United Kingdom; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension contribution 28.97%

Flexible working

25 days annual leave (rising)

8 Bank Holidays + Privilege Day

Staff discount portal

Professional qualifications paid

Job summary

Department for Transport in the United Kingdom is seeking a Principal AI Engineer to lead the technical delivery of AI solutions that inform high-stakes policy and transform operations. You will own projects end-to-end, designing, building, deploying, and maintaining AI systems across the product lifecycle.

You will deploy and monitor these solutions on cloud platforms (GCP/AWS) with CI/CD and IaC (Terraform), ensuring quality, scalability, and reliability while collaborating with

Qualifications

• Experience leading end-to-end delivery of AI or data science products in production environments.
• Proficient programming and software engineering for scalable, maintainable solutions.
• Experience deploying on cloud platforms (GCP/AWS) with CI/CD and IaC (Terraform).
• Experience applying AI technologies (LLMs, VLMs, RAG, Agents, etc.).
• Ability to collaborate across multidisciplinary teams and establish engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and deployment of AI solutions across the product lifecycle.
• Own end-to-end projects with stakeholders to deliver impact.
• Write high-quality, tested code with version control practices.
• Deploy and manage products on cloud environments with CI/CD and Terraform.
• Contribute to staff development and establish reusable engineering practices.

Skills

AI product delivery

Software engineering

Cloud platforms

CI/CD pipelines

Terraform IaC

GCP/AWS

LLMs

Reinforcement learning

Tools

Git

Terraform

Job description

Department for Transport in the United Kingdom is seeking a Principal AI Engineer to lead the technical delivery of AI solutions that inform high-stakes policy and transform operations. You will own projects end-to-end, designing, building, deploying, and maintaining AI systems across the product lifecycle.

You will deploy and monitor these solutions on cloud platforms (GCP/AWS) with CI/CD and IaC (Terraform), ensuring quality, scalability, and reliability while collaborating with