Senior AI Engineer (BioTech/Pharma)

Harvey Nash Group; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 111,000 - 129,000; Full time

Job summary

Harvey Nash is partnering with a focused consultancy to hire a Senior AI Engineer for a BioTech/Pharma project in Oxford. This outside IR35 contract is hybrid, with 2 days on-site per week, and runs for six months with potential extensions.

Strong production AI/ML deployment experience is required. The candidate will work on building and deploying LLM and agentic AI solutions, emphasizing performance, secure deployments, and scalable data pipelines.

Qualifications

• Senior Python engineer with production software engineering experience.
• Commercial experience building LLM, agentic AI or multi-agent systems.
• Hands‑on experience with LangGraph, LangChain, Haystack or similar frameworks.
• Proven ability to deploy AI/ML systems into production environments.
• Strong knowledge of inference, latency, performance, data pipelines, memory and tool/function calling.
• Experience with large‑scale search and retrieval, including embeddings, indexing and querying multi‑modal datasets.
• Confident with Docker, Git and cloud platforms, ideally AWS.
• Understanding of secure deployments, including air‑gapped, on‑premises or sovereign cloud environments.
• Strong technical ownership, documentation and stakeholder communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement AI/ML features in production.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams in BioTech/Pharma projects.
• Maintain documentation and system architecture in line with compliance.
• Ensure secure, scalable deployments across environments.

Skills

Python

LLM agentic AI

LangChain

Production deployment

Inference latency

Data pipelines

Embeddings

Docker

Git

AWS

Secure deployments

Tools

Kubernetes

OpenShift

EKS

Job description

Senior AI Engineer (BioTech/Pharma) | Outside IR35 Contract

£600 - 700pd | Hybrid, Oxford | 6 Months

Harvey Nash are working with an exciting consultancy who are looking to bring on a highly experienced AI Engineer to support on a crucial project within the BioTech/Pharma space. Industry domain knowledge would be beneficial.

Key Technical Skills Required

• Senior Python engineer with strong production software engineering experience.
• Commercial experience building LLM, agentic AI or multi-agent systems.
• Hands‑on experience with LangGraph, LangChain, Haystack or similar frameworks.
• Proven ability to deploy AI/ML systems into production environments.
• Strong knowledge of inference, latency, performance, data pipelines, memory and tool/function calling.
• Experience with large‑scale search and retrieval, including embeddings, indexing and querying multi‑modal datasets.
• Confident with Docker, Git and cloud platforms, ideally AWS.
• Understanding of secure deployments, including air‑gapped, on‑premises or sovereign cloud environments.
• Strong technical ownership, documentation and stakeholder communication skills.

Desirable

• Kubernetes, EKS or OpenShift.
• MLOps, monitoring, evaluation and reproducibility.
• Agent orchestration, A2A or MCP.
• Multimodal, edge or offline AI deployments.
• Secure‑by‑design principles, including ISO 27001, NIST or OWASP.

Contract Details

• £600 - 700pd - dependent on experience
• Outside IR35
• Hybrid - 2 days per week in Oxford
• 6 Months - extensions possible
• 2 Stage IV Process
• ASAP Start

Though SC clearance isn't required from the offset, it is highly advantageous. Subsequently, candidates who are eligible to obtain SC Clearance will also be prioritised.