Principal AI Engineer

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

Salary: £59,816 - £84,911 - A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Contract Type: Permanent - Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

Do you want to develop impactful AI products that address real-world transport challenges? We’re looking for Principal AI Engineers to lead the technical delivery of innovative, well-designed solutions that inform high-stakes decisions, transform complex processes and operations, and support critical policy objectives. You will use your technical expertise to design, build, deploy, and maintain AI solutions - providing technical ownership through all phases of the product lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of impactful AI solutions - including classical ML and agentic/LLM-based systems - providing technical leadership and ensuring solutions meet user and organisational needs.
• Own projects end to end with minimal supervision, working with partners, internal teams, and external stakeholders to address challenges and ensure your technical work achieves its intended impact.
• Write and review high-quality, maintainable code using established software development practices and tools, including version control and testing.
• Deploy and manage products across development, test, and production environments on cloud platforms (DfT uses GCP), using CI/CD pipelines with automated testing and Terraform (IaC).
• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary.
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave).
• 8 Bank Holidays plus an additional Privilege Day to mark the King’s birthday.
• Access to the staff discount portal.
• Excellent career development opportunities and the potential to undertake professional qualifications relevant to your role paid for by the department, such as CIPD, Prince2, apprenticeships, etc.
• 24-hour Employee Assistance Programme providing free confidential help and advice for staff.
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

About you

You will need to have experience of:

• Leading the end-to-end technical delivery of impactful AI or data science products, including design, development, deployment, monitoring, assurance, incident response and continuous improvement in production environments.
• Programming and software engineering to design and develop high-quality, scalable and maintainable solutions, applying strong engineering practices including version control, testing and code review.
• Deploying and managing products across development, test, and production environments on cloud platforms (e.g., GCP/AWS), using CI/CD pipelines with automated testing and Terraform or similar infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools to ship changes safely, reproducibly, and with rollback.
• Applying a range of AI technologies, such as LLMs, VLMs, RAG, Agents, MCP, computer vision, GraphML, recommendation systems or reinforcement learning.
• Collaborating across multidisciplinary teams, translating organisational priorities into technical solutions, communicating complex information effectively, and helping build organisational capability through setting standards, coaching and establishing reusable engineering practices.