Lead AI Engineer & Product Owner (Agentic Systems)

MarkIT Placements; St. James; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

MarkIT Placements is seeking a Lead / Principal AI Engineer to own product discovery and delivery across client engagements. You will architect AI agents, full-stack applications, and workflows with Next.js, FastAPI and MCP-based frameworks.

Expect collaboration with UX/design, cross-functional teams and a high accountability culture. You will drive roadmaps, write PRDs, and define success metrics while mentoring engineers and engaging with senior stakeholders.

Qualifications

• At least 6 years building production software.
• 3+ years building AI/agentic development systems.
• Hands-on agents and multi-step AI workflows experience.
• Experience with LangGraph, AutoGen, Claude Agent SDK or equivalent.
• Strong Python and/or TypeScript experience.
• Solid OOP, SOLID, 12-factor and microservice knowledge.
• Experience with Next.js and FastAPI or similar.
• Vector DBs, retrieval pipelines and AI evaluation frameworks.
• Cloud-native deployment with AWS, Azure, Cloudflare or Vercel.
• Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD tooling experience.
• Understanding of LLM behavior, failure modes, and optimization.
• Proven track record shipping technology (GitHub projects, portfolios).
• Experience owning a product area end-to-end.
• Experience in product discovery, roadmapping and prioritisation.
• Experience in writing PRDs, user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Experience defining success metrics and using data to steer direction.
• Collaborating with UX/design teams and agile delivery.
• Experience in client-facing consulting or similar environments.
• Ability to structure ambiguous problems for senior stakeholders.
• Strong written communication and executive-readout skills.
• Experience scoping, estimation and stakeholder management.
• Willingness to travel to client sites.
• Bachelor/Master in CS, ML or related.

Responsibilities

• Lead discovery with business and technical stakeholders.
• Separate client problems from underlying needs and hypotheses.
• Structure ambiguity into clear options and recommendations.
• Develop business cases around value, cost and outcomes.
• Communicate effectively with technical and executive audiences.
• Translate discovery into an outcome-driven roadmap.
• Own scope, priorities, sequencing and trade-offs.
• Create clear product documentation including PRDs and user stories.
• Define and track meaningful success metrics.
• Work with UX/design to align with user needs.
• Run agile delivery with backlogs, sprints, demos and releases.
• Own production software, including infrastructure and deployment.
• Develop full-stack apps, APIs, AI agents and workflows.
• Use technologies: Next.js, React, FastAPI, Fastify, Hono, MCP.
• Design agentic apps using LangGraph, AutoGen, Claude SDK or similar.
• Integrate LLMs with tools/databases and external systems.
• Implement RAG via vector databases and retrieval.
• Handle logging, monitoring, metrics and tracing.
• Automate CI/CD with GitHub Actions or Jenkins.
• Improve performance, scalability and cost efficiency.
• Mentor engineers and set client engagement standards.
• Lead interview/onboarding of future team members.

Skills

AI engineering

Python

TypeScript

OOP & SOLID

12-factor apps

Microservices

Next.js

FastAPI

LangGraph

AutoGen

Claude Agent SDK

OpenAI tooling

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Vector databases

Retrieval pipelines

Cloud deployment

AWS

Azure

GitHub

Agile delivery

Client relationships

Communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Machine Learning or related

Tools

LangGraph

AutoGen

Claude Agent SDK

OpenAI tooling

GitHub Copilot

Job description

MarkIT Placements is seeking a Lead / Principal AI Engineer to own product discovery and delivery across client engagements. You will architect AI agents, full-stack applications, and workflows with Next.js, FastAPI and MCP-based frameworks.

Expect collaboration with UX/design, cross-functional teams and a high accountability culture. You will drive roadmaps, write PRDs, and define success metrics while mentoring engineers and engaging with senior stakeholders.