Staff Software Engineer-AI

Moody's Investors Service; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Moody's Investors Service is seeking a senior engineering leader to design and ship scalable AI platforms and intelligent applications that bring emerging AI capabilities into production. You will act as a hands-on technical leader, coding and reviewing production systems that support AI-powered products and services, while guiding the technical direction for enterprise-scale backend services.

You will build scalable backend services, data pipelines, and platform components, champion MLOps

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with backend focus.
• Expert-level coding in Python, TypeScript, Go, or similar.
• Hands-on enterprise AI experience with LLMs and AI agents.
• Proven ability to take AI solutions from prototype to production.
• Cloud platforms with production Docker/Kubernetes experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, code, and lead delivery of scalable AI platforms and intelligent applications.
• Hands-on leadership: design, code, review, debug, and improve production systems.
• Build scalable backend services, APIs, data pipelines, and AI workloads at scale.
• Implement LLM apps using retrieval-Augmented generation and tooling.
• Drive engineering best practices: testing, observability, and reliability.
• Champion MLOps practices including model lifecycle management and deployment pipelines.
• Collaborate with PMs, data scientists, and engineers to translate strategy into solutions.
• Build reusable frameworks and tooling to accelerate AI development.
• Evaluate emerging AI tech and guide teams on patterns and trade-offs.
• Mentor engineers through coaching, reviews, and example-setting as a senior IC.

Skills

Senior backend leadership

Python

AI/ML expertise

Cloud platforms

Docker/Kubernetes

APIs & distributed systems

Observability & pipelines

Mentoring & leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in CS/SE/AI

Tools

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Redis

Vector databases

Docker

Kubernetes

Observability tools

Job description

Skills and Competencies

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with deep hands‑on experience designing, coding, testing, and operating scalable, resilient, production‑grade backend systems and cloud‑native services
• Expert-level coding capability in modern programming languages such as Python, TypeScript, Go, or similar, with the ability to personally contribute high‑quality production code while guiding technical direction
• Deep hands‑on expertise building enterprise AI applications using large language models, AI agents, retrieval‑augmented generation, prompt engineering, orchestration frameworks, evaluation methods, and model optimisation techniques
• Proven ability to take complex AI solutions from prototype to production, making practical engineering trade‑offs across performance, scalability, reliability, security, maintainability, and cost
• Expert knowledge of cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure, with strong experience using Docker, Kubernetes, Elastic Container Service, or equivalent technologies in production environments
• Strong experience designing and implementing application programming interfaces, distributed systems, event‑driven architectures, data pipelines, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, vector databases, observability, and automated deployment pipelines
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction while remaining close to the codebase, mentoring engineers through design reviews, code reviews, pairing, debugging, and hands‑on problem solving
• Deep expertise in artificial intelligence, with a track record of implementing advanced AI solutions to drive strategic transformation and operational efficiency. Strong experience using AI tools to lead innovation initiatives. Demonstrated leadership in managing AI‑related risks, ensuring ethical governance, and fostering a culture of responsible AI adoption across the organization

Education

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

Responsibilities

Design, code, and lead delivery of scalable AI platforms and intelligent applications that bring emerging AI capabilities into production

• Act as a hands‑on technical leader, spending significant time designing, coding, reviewing, debugging, and improving production systems that support AI‑powered products and services
• Design and build scalable backend services, application programming interfaces, data pipelines, inference pipelines, and platform capabilities that support real‑time and batch AI workloads at enterprise scale
• Implement advanced large language model applications using retrieval‑augmented generation, prompt orchestration, evaluation frameworks, model optimisation, agentic workflows, and tool integration
• Make key technical decisions while remaining accountable for practical implementation quality, including code maintainability, system performance, reliability, security, scalability, and cost efficiency
• Establish engineering best practices through hands‑on contribution, code reviews, technical design reviews, automated testing, observability, monitoring, and operational excellence
• Champion machine learning operations practices including model lifecycle management, prompt versioning, automated evaluation, deployment pipelines, monitoring, and continuous improvement
• Partner with product managers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, engineering leaders, and business stakeholders to translate strategic priorities into robust, buildable technical solutions
• Build reusable frameworks, libraries, developer tooling, and platform components that accelerate AI development across multiple teams without creating unnecessary abstraction or complexity
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies through practical prototypes, proof‑of‑concept builds, and production‑readiness assessments, then guide teams on implementation patterns and trade‑offs
• Mentor engineers through practical technical coaching, pairing, code reviews, design feedback, documentation, and example‑setting as a senior individual contributor

About the Team

Our Digital Content and Innovation (DC&I) team is responsible for building next‑generation internal and external products powered by cutting‑edge artificial intelligence technologies, including large language models, AI agents, machine learning, and natural language processing. The group brings together engineers, data scientists, and AI specialists to solve complex challenges and turn breakthrough ideas into practical products that enhance productivity, unlock insights, and create measurable business impact. Collaboration is central to how the team works. Engineers contribute across the full AI lifecycle, from experimentation and prototyping through to large‑scale production deployment, while helping shape reusable platforms, frameworks, and responsible AI practices. By joining the team, you will work on some of the most exciting challenges in applied AI, contribute directly to production code and architecture, and be part of a culture that values curiosity, innovation, knowledge sharing, and continuous growth.