Lead AI Engineer — Production-Grade AI for Public Sector

Scrumconnect Consulting; Newcastle upon Tyne; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Scrumconnect Consulting is a multi-award-winning digital consultancy delivering impactful AI solutions to UK government departments. We seek a Lead AI Engineer to build production-grade AI systems (RAG, embeddings, orchestration) within a secure, multi-cloud environment.

The role sits in a Rainbow Team with civil servants and engineers, mentoring a growing internal capability while ensuring Responsible AI and green IT commitments are met.

Qualifications

• Loosely mapped to the Government Digital and Data (DDaT) framework, at Lead Engineer level.
• Strong general-purpose programming in Python.
• Experience with semantic search, RAG pipelines and AI/ML systems.
• Ability to own components end-to-end and mentor engineers.

Responsibilities

• Hands-On Build & Delivery: Design, build, and ship production AI components with robust testing.
• Technical Leadership Within the Squad: set coding standards and review designs; mentor engineers.

Skills

Python programming

Systems design

Data engineering

DevOps / CD

Testing & evaluation

Agile working

LLMOps

Cloud-native engineering

Security by design

Cloud certifications

Public sector experience

Open-source contributions

Green IT / sustainability

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Job description

Scrumconnect Consulting is a multi-award-winning digital consultancy delivering impactful AI solutions to UK government departments. We seek a Lead AI Engineer to build production-grade AI systems (RAG, embeddings, orchestration) within a secure, multi-cloud environment.

The role sits in a Rainbow Team with civil servants and engineers, mentoring a growing internal capability while ensuring Responsible AI and green IT commitments are met.