Senior AI Engineer - Perm Developer Productivity

Lorien; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Job summary

Lorien in Manchester is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to boost developer productivity. This hands-on role uses LLMs and coding agents to improve software delivery, in a hybrid setup with 2 days in the office weekly.

You will build tooling and workflows, measure results honestly, and work with real codebases, CI/CD, testing and observability. Strong Python/SQL skills and the ability to influence without authority are essential.

Qualifications

• Strong professional software engineering experience, including building and operating production software.
• Excellent programming and software design skills, with a solid grasp of testing, CI/CD and code review.
• Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs, including tool calling and agentic workflows.
• Day-to-day use of AI coding tools and agents on real codebases, with an evidence-based view of where they help and where they hurt.
• A practical understanding of how LLMs and agents fail: plausible but wrong code, fixes that mask symptoms, tests gamed to pass, context limits and cost growth.
• Experience integrating with Git platforms, CI/CD, issue trackers and observability tooling.
• Experience designing evaluations for AI outputs, or comparable experimental rigour.
• Python (or similar) and SQL for preparing code, documents and tickets for retrieval.

Responsibilities

• Hands-on role building tooling and workflows to enable AI in real codebases.
• Measure results honestly and report evidence to guide engineering decisions.
• Use LLMs and coding agents to improve software delivery without focusing on model-building.
• Work with modern tooling, open-source models, and secure, observable pipelines.

Skills

Production software

CI/CD

LLM APIs

Python

SQL

Code review

Observability tooling

Evaluation design

Influence without authority

Tools

Git

Bitbucket

Jenkins/Harness

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

FastAPI

Job description

Lead AI Engineer - Developer Productivity

Manchester (hybrid, 2 days a week in the office) | Permanent | £100,000-£110,000 + bonus

A leading digital and retail business in the global betting and gaming industry is looking for an engineer who'd rather prove what works than sell what's fashionable.

With around 250 engineers building and running its platforms, the business wants to use LLMs and coding agents to help them deliver better software, faster, and to be able to show the evidence. This is a hands‑on role. You'll work out where AI helps engineers and where it doesn't, build the tooling and workflows that make it work in real codebases, and measure the results honestly. You'll use the best available models, coding agents and open-source tools. This isn't a model‑building or research role.

What they're looking for:

• Strong professional software engineering experience, including building and operating production software
• Excellent programming and software design skills, with a solid grasp of testing, CI/CD and code review
• Hands‑on experience building with LLM APIs, including tool calling and agentic workflows
• Day-to-day use of AI coding tools and agents on real codebases, with an evidence-based view of where they help and where they hurt
• A practical understanding of how LLMs and agents fail: plausible but wrong code, fixes that mask symptoms, tests gamed to pass, context limits and cost growth
• Experience integrating with Git platforms, CI/CD, issue trackers and observability tooling
• Experience designing evaluations for AI outputs, or comparable experimental rigour
• Python (or similar) and SQL for preparing code, documents and tickets for retrieval
• Credibility with engineers and the ability to influence without line authority, including winning over sceptics
• Helpful: Bitbucket, Jenkins/Harness, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, FastAPI, MCP, DORA-style measurement, RAG and vector search, self-hosted open-weight models, or a regulated environment such as gambling or financial services