Senior AI Engineer: Generative AI & RAG Prototyping

PA Consulting; Belfast City; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and lifestyle perks

25 days annual leave

Generous pension scheme

Performance-based bonus

Share ownership

Job summary

PA Consulting is seeking software engineers passionate about AI to join their Digital & Data team in Belfast City. You will collaborate on innovative projects, implementing solutions with a strong focus on emerging technologies and cloud platforms. The role offers a hybrid work environment and a range of professional development opportunities.

Ideal candidates will have experience with AI tools, strong programming skills, and a collaborative mindset. PA Consulting provides comprehensive health benefits, generous annual leave, and a robust pension scheme.

Qualifications

• A strong foundation in a language suited to AI development.
• Curiosity about LLMs and agent frameworks.
• Experience integrating models with APIs and data sources.

Responsibilities

• Work with emerging AI technologies and frameworks.
• Collaborate within cross-functional teams to deliver solutions.
• Experiment with Generative AI tools and backend integrations.

Skills

Passion for AI

Experience with APIs

Understanding of LLMOps

Collaborative mindset

Strong programming foundation

Job description

We believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future.

As strategies, technologies, and innovation collide, we create opportunity from complexity.

Our teams of interdisciplinary experts combine innovative thinking and breakthrough technologies to progress further, faster. Our clients adapt and transform, and together we achieve enduring results.

We are over 4,000 strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers, and technologists. And we have deep expertise in consumer and manufacturing, defence and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government and public services, health and life sciences, and transport.

Our teams operate globally from offices across the UK, Ireland, US, Nordics, and Netherlands.

PA. Bringing Ingenuity to Life.

Job Description

We believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future. We challenge where it matters and own the outcome. We combine strategic thinking, customer-centric service design, and agile engineering practices to accelerate innovation in a tech-driven world.

• Join our Digital & Data team working alongside product, design and a wide range of other experts and cross-disciplinary teams to bring ideas to life through innovative software solutions.
• Grow a flexible and unique career within a trust-based, inclusive environment that values excellence, innovation, and curiosity. You have the option to progress with us on a technical career track. No need to go onto the Partner career track if this doesn’t align with what you want to do.
• Hybrid working - our approach is to be in the office or on client site a minimum of 2 days per week.
• Work on a broad variety of projects and tech stacks for clients across seven sectors - no project is ever the same
• Join other experts within our supportive and collaborative tech community through knowledge-sharing and peer-level support, coaching and mentoring
• Deepen your expertise through our culture of learning and growth – you’ll have budget to take courses (technical and non-technical training), plus gain certifications

What you can expect 🌱

• Work to agile best practices and cross-functionally with multiple teams and stakeholders. You’ll be using your technical skills to problem solve with our clients, as well as working on internal projects
• Live in-person whiteboarding sessions to problem solve as a team, alongside asynchronous communication on Teams
• Hybrid working with the team on client site or in our office a minimum of two days per week. However, the actual time you spend and where you spend it will vary by role or assignment, including up to 5 days per week on a client site.
• We’re hands-on with emerging technologies – exploring what works, what scales, and what’s next:
• Experimenting with Generative AI frameworks and tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, and APIs from OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) prototypes with vector stores and knowledge graphs.
• Developing and testing agentic architectures through our own Genie Platform – enabling AI agents that reason, retrieve, and act across systems.
• Exploring LLMOps, evaluation tools, and model observability platforms like TruLens and LangSmith.
• Deploying solutions on modern cloud and DevOps environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) – but always choosing the right tools for the problem at hand.
• Constantly learning, testing, and sharing findings across our internal AI community.

Qualifications

Essential requirements ✅

Even if you don’t meet every requirement below, feel free to still apply as we are often hiring for similar roles which your background might be better suited to.

• Software engineers with a passion for AI – or data scientists who’ve embraced engineering.
• People who experiment, prototype, and explore emerging AI tools in their own time.
• Strong foundation in a language suited to AI system development and data workflows.
• Experience integrating models with APIs, data sources, or production systems.
• Curiosity about LLMs, RAG pipelines (Graph & Vector based), and agent frameworks.
• Understanding of cloud-native (AWS / GCP / Azure) and DevOps / DevSecOps practices.
• A collaborative mindset and willingness to share, learn, and teach.
• Understanding of prompt and context engineering and model evaluation.
• Solid grasp of distributed systems, microservices, and RESTful APIs.
• An understanding of LLMOps tools for managing GenAI workflows.

Please be aware that some of our UK roles at PA Consulting require a UK security clearance.

All PA people are required to undergo background checks and to achieve the Baseline Personnel Security Standard however, some UK roles also require higher levels of National Security Vetting, where applicants must have at least 5 years of continuous residency in the UK.

We therefore ask that you only apply if you meet the residency requirements (i.e. you are a British citizen or have been resident in the UK for the past 5 years), as this is the prerequisite for a security clearance. If you're unsure about your eligibility, we encourage you to review the UK Government’s guidance on security vetting before applying.

Additional Information

Please note that the interview stages may be subject to change based on the specific requirements of the role.

• Quick call with one of our Tech Recruiters – to discuss your application, the role and PA
• Round 1: Either a competency or technical interview (60 mins)
• Round 2: Either a competency or technical interview, whichever you didn’t do at first round (60 mins)
• Final round 🎉: Meeting with a PA leader - a mini case study and discussion around your client-centricity (60 mins)

Life At PA encompasses our peoples' experience at PA. It's about how we enrich peoples’ working lives by giving them access to unique people and growth opportunities and purpose led meaningful work.

Our purpose guides how we work with our clients and our teams, and support our communities, to deliver insight and impact, solving the world’s most complex challenges. We're focused on building a workplace that values human difference and diverse mindsets, and a culture of inclusion and equality that unlocks the potential in our people so everyone can be their best self.

We are dedicated to supporting the physical, emotional, social and financial well-being of our people. Check out some of our extensive benefits:

• Health and lifestyle perks accompanying private healthcare for you and your family
• 25 days annual leave (plus a bonus half day on Christmas Eve) with the opportunity to buy 5 additional days
• Generous company pension scheme
• Opportunity to get involved with community and charity-based initiatives
• Annual performance-based bonus
• PA share ownership
• Tax efficient benefits (cycle to work, give as you earn)

We’re committed to advancing equality.We recruit, retain, reward and develop our people based solely on their abilities and contributions and without reference to their age, background, disability, genetic information, parental or family status, religion or belief, race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity (or expression), political belief, veteran status, any other range of human difference brought about by identity and experience. We welcome applications from underrepresented groups.

Adjustments or accommodations - Should you need any adjustments or accommodations to the recruitment process, at either application or interview, please contact us on [emailprotected]

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