Senior Data & AI Engineer — GenAI, Production Systems

Wavestone; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Income protection insurance

5% company pension

Private health and dental cover

Life insurance

Company share scheme

25 days annual leave

Flexible benefits

Job summary

Wavestone UK is hiring for a senior Data & AI practitioner to lead and deliver large-scale AI transformations for FTSE100 and enterprise clients. You will shape strategy, design, and deployment of production AI, mentor a growing team, and contribute to our thought leadership.

The role requires deep technical and communication skills to bridge business and technology, with travel to client sites and offices in London and beyond.

Qualifications

• Proven experience building AI/LLM-powered applications in production.
• Deep understanding of AI/GenAI fundamentals, including model behaviour, limitations, and evaluation.
• Experience designing and implementing: RAG systems; Agentic workflows / multi-step reasoning systems; Tool-using AI applications.
• Strong system design and architecture skills (APIs, data pipelines, distributed systems).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Ability to make technical trade-offs (cost, latency, accuracy, scalability).
• Experience working in client-facing or consulting environments, as well as leading teams and projects.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience across multiple AI platforms (e.g., Claude, GPT, open-source models).
• Familiarity with orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.).
• Experience optimising AI systems for performance, cost, and reliability.
• Knowledge of enterprise architecture and regulated environments.
• Experience with AI agents, copilots, or automation systems.
• Exposure to AI governance, safety, and responsible AI practices.
• Contributions to thought leadership, open-source, or internal capability building.

Responsibilities

• Business Development: Act as a trusted subject-matter expert in AI engineering and GenAI during pre-sales and sales activity; shape solutions, proposals, and go-to-market initiatives.
• Thought Leadership & Proposition Ownership: Shape AI and GenAI propositions; contribute to thought leadership through articles and events; develop accelerators and playbooks.
• People Development: Mentor consultants and engineers; share best practices and provide technical guidance; contribute to career development within the practice.
• Maintain Expertise: Stay at the forefront of AI/GenAI; explore new technologies and patterns to enhance client delivery and internal capability.

Skills

AI/LLM in prod

GenAI fundamentals

RAG systems

Agentic workflows

Tool-using AI

System architecture

Cloud platforms

Trade-offs

Client-facing

Communication skills

Multiple AI platforms

Orchestration frameworks

Performance optimization

Enterprise architecture

AI agents

Governance & safety

Thought leadership

Job description

Wavestone UK is hiring for a senior Data & AI practitioner to lead and deliver large-scale AI transformations for FTSE100 and enterprise clients. You will shape strategy, design, and deployment of production AI, mentor a growing team, and contribute to our thought leadership.

The role requires deep technical and communication skills to bridge business and technology, with travel to client sites and offices in London and beyond.