Principal Applied AI Engineer

Principal Applied AI EngineerRemote, East Coast | $350k (Base + Equity)You'll be the technical owner of an AI-powered platform, from architecture through production, not just a contributor to one. This is a hands-on role: you're still writing code, still in the architecture decisions, and still setting technical direction for a small team building real systems on top of LLMs.The CompanyAn AI-focused technology company helping enterprises understand, model, and optimise how work gets done. The platform combines business modelling and generative AI to produce transformation strategies for large clients. Backed by strong commercial momentum and investing directly in engineering as it scales.The RoleThis is genuinely hands-on Applied AI Engineering work, not general backend engineering with an AI label attached.Architect and evolve a production LLM platform: orchestration, retrieval, multi-provider model routing, and evaluation.Stay in the codebase. Design, build, and review code alongside the team, not just direct it.Own evaluation for the system: define what "good" looks like, catch regressions before they reach users, and keep the platform reliable as it scales.Own the GCP infrastructure the platform runs on: deployment pipelines, BigQuery, Cloud Run, IAM.Lead a small multidisciplinary team of software engineers, data engineers, and data scientists day to day, through code review and technical guidance.Translate requirements from technical and non-technical stakeholders into shipped, scalable solutions.What We're Looking ForProduction experience building and shipping LLM applications: LangChain, LangGraph, or equivalent orchestration frameworks.Working knowledge of multiple model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini) and the trade-offs between them.Real evaluation experience: you've had to define what "good" means for a system with no existing benchmark, not just run a test suite someone else built.Strong Python and production software engineering fundamentals: distributed systems, testing, CI/CD.Hands-on GCP experience: Cloud Run, BigQuery, IAM, deployment pipelines.A track record of technical leadership through code review and mentorship, while remaining hands-on.Comfortable in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment.A plus, not a requirement: exposure to analytics, financial services, consulting, or business transformation.What's On Offer$350k, structured across base and meaningful early-stage equity.Health, dental, and vision.Retirement plan.Generous holiday allowance.Remote or hybrid, East Coast.Real influence over architecture, product direction, and engineering culture at an early stage.How to ApplyIf this is genuinely the kind of work you want, hands-on, architecture-level, building and evaluating real AI systems, apply below.Provide your feedback on BizChat