Sr. AI Engineer, Retrieval & Agentic Systems

Kharon; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 98,000 - 112,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully-sponsored private health保险

Pension plan with 3% employer

Annual leave plus bank holidays

Job summary

Kharon in London, UK, is seeking a Sr. AI Engineer for Retrieval & Agentic Systems. This full-time hybrid role focuses on content discovery, hybrid retrieval, and explorer pipelines to deliver accurate risk intelligence.

Competitive annual remuneration and discretionary bonus accompany a strong production mindset. The role requires 3+ years in AI/data roles, expertise in information retrieval and LLM-powered workflows, and a robust Python background.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in Data Science, AI Engineering, ML Engineering, or related software engineering roles.
• Hands‑on experience in information retrieval, including lexical search, embeddings, vector search, hybrid retrieval, ranking, reranking, and retrieval evaluation.
• Practical experience building LLM‑powered applications, RAG pipelines, or agentic workflows.
• Strong Python skills and the ability to take an idea from prototype to production.

Responsibilities

• Own and advance content discovery in Corestream, improving how customers find, explore, and engage with risk intelligence.
• Redesign and improve hybrid search capabilities, using BM25 tuning, semantic distance, RAG, reranking, and graph-based signals.
• Explore and build new discovery experiences, including agentic search, intelligent categorization, personalized feeds, and connections across large intelligence collections.
• Drive the evolution of the narrative generation pipeline, turning graph and analytical data into compelling, accurate written intelligence.
• Own problems end-to-end from opportunity identification to prototyping, implementation, deployment, and production improvement.
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science, and Engineering, influencing priorities and architecture while contributing hands-on.

Skills

Global security domain experience

AI/ML engineering

Information retrieval

LLM-powered applications

Problem solving ownership

Curiosity and experimentation

Graph signals awareness

Tools

Python

Embeddings

Vector search

Hybrid retrieval

RAG pipelines

Agentic workflows

BM25 tuning

Graph-based signals

Job description

Sr. AI Engineer, Retrieval & Agentic Systems

London, United Kingdom, GB

London, United Kingdom, GB Full Time · Hybrid

Location: London, UK

Annual Remuneration: £105,000 - £120,000 and discretionary annual bonus

Pay Frequency: Monthly

Probationary Period: 180 days

TL;DR Kharon is seeking a full-time Senior AI Engineer, Retrieval & Agentic Systems based in London.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Own and advance content discovery in Corestream, improving how customers find, explore, and engage with relevant risk intelligence, while helping shape the technical direction of discovery capabilities across Kharon's products.
• Redesigning and improving Kharon's hybrid search capabilities, opening new avenues for content discovery — drawing on modern approaches including BM25 tuning, semantic distance, RAG, reranking, and graph-based signals that go beyond traditional semantic similarity.
• Explore and build new discovery experiences, including agentic search, intelligent content categorization, personalized feeds, and systems that surface relevant connections across large collections of intelligence.
• Driving the evolution of Kharon's narrative generation pipeline — how we take graph and analytical data and transform it into compelling, accurate written intelligence for customers.
• Own problems end to end, from identifying opportunities and evaluating approaches to prototyping, implementing, deploying, and continuously improving production systems.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Data Science, and Engineering, influencing priorities and architectural decisions while maintaining a strong hands‑on contribution.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• A proven interest or experience in global security, financial crimes, sanctions, export controls, or related domains
• 3+ years of experience in Data Science, AI Engineering, ML Engineering, or related software engineering roles
• Hands‑on experience in information retrieval, including experience with some combination of lexical search, embeddings, vector search, hybrid retrieval, ranking, reranking, and retrieval evaluation
• Practical experience building LLM‑powered applications, RAG pipelines, or agentic workflows.
• Strong Python skills and the software engineering ability to take an idea from prototype to a reliable, maintainable production implementation
• Demonstrated initiative and technical ownership — a track record of tackling ambiguous problems independently, challenging assumptions, and driving solutions forward while working with stakeholders
• Curiosity and a willingness to experiment with emerging approaches while maintaining a pragmatic focus on what actually works
• Bonus: Experience with graph‑aware search or integrating knowledge graph outputs into retrieval systems

ABOUT KHARON:

Kharon operates at the nexus of global security and is on a mission to revolutionize the current landscape. We take complex data as it relates to global security and empower our clients to not only understand the risk associated with their potential business relationships but to operationalize that data so that they can make the best and most informed decisions possible.

From financial crimes and sanctions to export controls and threat identifications, our tools optimize protection against the types of risks that could otherwise be incredibly dangerous and excessively costly to any business. Serving many of today’s leading global financial and multinational institutions, Kharon products are the most powerful in the space with a precision and depth that is absolutely unparalleled.

When you look at any major global crisis event, we’re providing intelligence that’s at the heart of those circumstances. We connect the dots in a way that’s meaningful. As the world continues to evolve in complexity, so too does the demand for our products. Given the significance of our work and the increasing global reliance on our insights, we are looking for a Sr. AI Engineer, Retrieval & Agentic Systemsto join us as we work to shape the way businesses perceive and navigate global risks.

Company Benefits

• Fully-sponsored private health insurance
• Pension plan with 3% employer contribution
• Annual leave plus bank holidays

DISCLOSURES

Kharon is committed to cultivating and maintaining a workplace that is free from harassment and discrimination. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation or identity, neurodiversity, appearances, age, protected veteran status, or status as a qualified individual with disability.

We are committed to making reasonable adjustments to support disabled applicants and employees. If you require any adjustment to participate in the recruitment process, please contact [e-mail]

You must have the right to work in the UK. Kharon is unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.

UNITED KINGDOM Candidate Privacy Notice

Kharon is committed to protecting your personal data in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We collect the personal data you submit as part of your application — including your name, contact details, employment history, and qualifications — to assess your suitability for the role. Our lawful basis for processing is legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR).

If your application is unsuccessful, your data will be retained for up to 12 months before being securely deleted. If you accept a role, your data will transfer to your employee record.

You have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of your data, to object to or restrict its processing, and to lodge a complaint with the UK data protection authority, the ICO, at www.ico.org.uk . To exercise your rights, contact us at [e-mail].