Senior Forward-Deployed AI Engineer

GlaxoSmithKline plc; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; On-site; GBP 75,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

GlaxoSmithKline plc in the Enterprise AI team seeks Engineer II, a senior individual contributor who takes full ownership of FDE engagements end-to-end—embedding inside business unit teams, prototyping AI ideas at a days-to-weeks cadence, leading G8 FDEs on multi-engineer engagements, and handing proven solutions off cleanly to the Solutions Engineer.

This role operates at the intersection of technical depth and stakeholder influence.

Responsibilities

• Take full ownership of BU use cases from problem framing through to working prototype, at days-to-weeks cadence, without close supervision.
• Qualify incoming BU asks - challenge underspecified problems, assess feasibility, and define scope before committing to an engagement.
• Embed with BU teams - product owners, engineering leads, and the wider BU - building trusted working relationships and genuine domain understanding.
• Form and defend kill/continue recommendations at the end of each engagement based on evidence - presenting clearly to BU and Enterprise AI leadership.
• Ship first production versions on engagements where the path is clear and complexity is bounded, before handing forward to the Solutions Engineer.
• Lead small multi-FDE engagements - direct the work of G8 FDEs, review their output, and ensure delivery quality without becoming the bottleneck.
• Actively mentor G8 FDEs during engagements: provide technical guidance, share engagement judgement, and give structured feedback that accelerates their development.
• Contribute to FDE interview and onboarding processes where relevant.
• Operate AI agent workflows for autonomous prototype delivery - orchestrating multi-agent systems as the primary engineering mode.
• Use AI coding assistants as the default mode of building; direct, validate, and course-correct AI-generated code at engineering speed.
• Design and orchestrate multi-agent systems end-to-end; judge when agentic approaches add value versus simpler alternatives, and guide G8 FDEs in making the same calls.
• Package proven use cases cleanly for the Solutions Engineer - working code, architecture rationale, open risks, and scaling concerns.
• Own the quality of FDE pattern library contributions - distil every engagement into reusable agents, prompt templates, and reference architectures.

Job description

GlaxoSmithKline plc in the Enterprise AI team seeks Engineer II, a senior individual contributor who takes full ownership of FDE engagements end-to-end—embedding inside business unit teams, prototyping AI ideas at a days-to-weeks cadence, leading G8 FDEs on multi-engineer engagements, and handing proven solutions off cleanly to the Solutions Engineer.

This role operates at the intersection of technical depth and stakeholder influence.