Lead Applied AI Engineer in Manchester

Fuzzy Labs is a fast-growing, Manchester-based tech consultancy that helps a diverse range of clients build, deploy, and productionise AI systems using open source technologies. We exist to help our customers harness and channel the power of AI safely and effectively, to make positive change and use AI for good. Our work sits across the whole development lifecycle, from exploring and prototyping new AI use cases to building scalable, secure, production-grade machine learning and generative AI systems, and everything in between. Our work spans disruptive startups, multi-national organisations, policing, and secure government sectors, providing you with the unique opportunity to make a tangible, real-world impact.

The ideal candidate will be motivated to grow and progress in line with the company’s ambitions: we’re looking for passionate engineers with an appetite for keeping up with the cutting edge, an eye for detail, and a knack for creative problem solving. This role suits experienced technical leaders looking for a forward-deployed engineering role where they can combine strong software engineering, applied AI, technical leadership, customer problem solving, and project ownership. You’ll work close to the people using what we build, helping turn ambiguous AI opportunities into reliable production systems that deliver real-world impact.

As a Lead Applied AI Engineer, we’ll look to you to lead engineering squads, own the technical delivery of client projects, shape technical direction, support and mentor engineers, and work confidently with customers from discovery through to production delivery. As well as being a great engineer, motivated by the chance to be at the forefront of applied AI, you’ll also enjoy being part of a culture that values:

• Loving what we do: a real passion for open source, applied AI, MLOps, and taking pride in our work.
• Just trying it: AI is moving quickly. We love to develop new skills, solve new problems and thrive on a challenge.
• Being greater than the sum of parts: we are a team, one that isn’t just us but our customers and our community.
• Positive impact: AI is going to change the world. We choose to use it for good and leave a positive legacy.

A typical day includes:

• Being hands-on with the technical delivery of projects.
• Working directly with clients to understand their needs, shape ambiguous problems, recommend appropriate solutions, and bring them along on the journey.
• Owning the delivery of client projects, from discovery and prototyping through to production deployment, handover and ongoing improvement.
• Leading the design and implementation of production-grade AI systems, including LLM-powered applications, retrieval augmented generation, model serving, evaluation frameworks, AI agents, data pipelines, cloud-native infrastructure, and MLOps workflows.
• Making pragmatic technical decisions that balance delivery speed, reliability, security, maintainability, user needs and commercial constraints.
• Leading sprint planning sessions, retrospectives and code reviews, ensuring the team is focused, unblocked and delivering high-quality work.
• Working as part of the team, sharing and reviewing ideas, mentoring and guiding team members through technology, architecture, implementation details and delivery trade-offs.
• Supporting your team members’ personal development objectives within client projects.
• Helping to grow the team by taking part in hiring and interviewing.
• Helping to write proposals for new clients, participating in the technical side of the sales process, and shaping credible delivery approaches for applied AI opportunities.
• Staying up-to-date with a fast-moving industry, embracing new tools and frameworks, and sharing your learnings with the team.

Skills and Experience:

• An undergraduate degree in computer science, mathematics, or similar, or a relevant postgraduate degree.
• A passion for coding, machine learning, AI, open source technologies, and setting high standards for their implementation and adoption.
• Strong experience writing and deploying production-grade Python software.
• Experience with machine learning or generative AI systems.
• Experience designing and delivering cloud-based systems.
• Experience leading technical delivery across a project, team or workstream.
• Experience managing, mentoring or supporting the development of software engineers.
• Experience delivering software using an agile development methodology.
• Fluency in core software tooling: Git, Unix/Linux, Docker, and common open-source AI, ML or MLOps tools.
• Excellent communication skills, both in customer-facing and internal team communication.

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all of the requirements. Applied AI is an emerging field, sitting at the intersection of software engineering, machine learning engineering, data science, DevOps and product delivery.

Benefits:

• 25 days holiday rising to 30 with each year of service.
• Enhanced family leave, including maternity, paternity and adoption leave.
• Healthcare cash plan.
• £500 annual personal development budget and AI assistant of your choice.
• Equity option scheme, giving you a genuine stake in the business.
• Hybrid working in a vibrant, central Manchester office.
• Cycle to Work Scheme and secure bike storage.
• Paid time off for charity and volunteering.
• Company socials, summer and Christmas parties.

Location and Eligibility:

As a hybrid-working organisation, we bring the team together in the office three days each week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and work remotely on the remaining days. Some client work may also involve occasional travel to customer sites across the UK. Due to the sensitive nature of some projects, you will be required to undergo UK government security clearance after you start, at SC level. This will include a credit check and criminal records check. We’re only able to consider candidates who have been resident in the UK for 5 or more years.