Lead Applied AI Engineer (Research & Development)

About the Company We’re partnering with a high-growth technology company building next-generation, AI-powered infrastructure within the financial services ecosystem.The RoleWe’re looking for a Lead AI Engineer with genuine depth across data science, machine learning & AI research, combined with the engineering ability to take ideas all the way from research and experimentation into production.The ideal profile started closer to ML, modelling or research and has developed strong full-stack engineering capabilities.You’ll operate as a hands-on technical leader, driving R&D, prototyping new ideas and helping define the technical direction of the company's AI products.The Ideal ProfileThe strongest candidates will combine four areas:Data Science & Machine Learning: Build, train, validate and calibrate models with a strong understanding of the underlying mathematics.AI Research: Strong knowledge of foundation models, agents and emerging AI techniques, with the ability to translate research into working products.Full-Stack Engineering: Comfortable working across backend services, data infrastructure and frontend applications.Product & UI/UX: Strong product instincts and an appreciation for building intuitive, polished user experiences.What You'll DoLead AI R&D — Develop intelligent systems capable of performing increasingly sophisticated analysis, reasoning and decision-making.Build intelligent knowledge systems — Create AI systems capable of ingesting information from multiple internal sources and transforming it into structured, accessible organisational intelligence.Build end-to-end — Take ideas from research and prototype through to production, spanning models, data infrastructure, backend services and product interfaces.Set technical direction — Help define the architecture and strategic roadmap for AI and R&D initiatives.Push the technical frontier — Evaluate and apply emerging approaches across foundation models, causal inference, streaming analytics and real-time machine learning.Mentor and elevate — Raise the standard of engineering and research while helping develop a high-performing technical team.Qualifications6+ years of engineering experience with a strong track record in AI or data-intensive products.Genuine depth in AI/ML, including building and deploying production models.Strong Python expertise.Experience with distributed data technologies such as Spark, Kafka, Snowflake or Databricks.Experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.Proven experience architecting and scaling production-grade systems.Ability to build product-facing applications and interfaces.Experience leading technically ambitious 0→1 R&D initiatives.PhD in AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science or a related discipline strongly preferred; exceptional equivalent research or industry experience will also be considered.Bonus PointsPublished AI/ML research or contributions to open-source AI/data projects.Experience building AI within financial services or other data-intensive, regulated environments.Experience working with real-time decisioning systems.Experience with modern financial APIs or embedded financial infrastructure.Strong product/design sensibility and experience shipping polished AI products.Why Join?Join an early-stage, highly technical team tackling difficult real-world problems using AI.You'll work closely with experienced technical leadership and have significant influence over architecture, research direction and product development.The role offers substantial ownership, autonomy and freedom to explore ambitious ideas as the company scales.