Principal AI Engineer

Join Kainos and shape the future. At Kainos, we're problem solvers, innovators, and collaborators - driven by a shared mission to create real impact. Whether we're transforming digital services for millions, delivering cutting-edge Workday solutions, or pushing the boundaries of technology, we do it together.

We believe in a people-first culture, where your ideas are valued, your growth is supported, and your contributions truly make a difference. Here, you'll be part of a diverse, ambitious team that celebrates creativity and collaboration. Ready to make your mark? Join us and be part of something bigger.

Kainos is recognised as one of the UK's leading AI and data businesses, with a decade-long track record of delivering impactful, production-grade AI solutions for clients across government, healthcare, defence and commercial sectors. Kainos is at the forefront of AI innovation, trusted by Microsoft, AWS and others to deliver advanced AI and data solutions at citizen scale.

Our 150-strong AI and Data Practice brings together deep expertise in machine learning, generative AI, agentic AI and data. We are pioneers in responsible AI, having authored the UK government's AI Cyber Security Code of Practice implementation guide and we partner with leading organisations to ensure AI is deployed ethically, securely and with measurable business value. Our teams are at the cutting edge of AI research and delivery; it is truly an exciting team to join Kainos as we further grow our AI capability.

Main Purpose of the Role & Responsibilities:

As an AI Engineer Manager at Kainos, you'll be responsible for successful delivery of advanced AI solutions leveraging state-of-the-art machine learning, generative and agentic AI technologies. You will drive the adoption of modern AI frameworks, AIOps best practices and scalable cloud-native architectures. Your role will involve technical leadership, engaging with senior stakeholders to agree architectural principles, strategic direction and system architecture. As a technical leader within Kainos and the wider industry, you will foster a culture of innovation, continuous learning and engineering excellence.

You will manage, coach and develop a team, with a focus on development of standards and policies, enduring customer relationships and embedding commercial acumen. You'll also provide direction and leadership for your team as you solve challenging problems together.

Minimum (Essential) Requirements:

• A minimum of a 2.1 degree in Computer Science, AI, Data Science, Statistics or in a similar quantitative field.
• Proven experience of leading multi-disciplinary teams to deliver AI/ML solutions to production.
• Demonstrable experience of technical leadership for AI delivery including architecture, product design principles and engineering excellence.
• Experience with the latest AI engineering approaches such as prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic AI, model evaluation, and monitoring using metrics (e.g. precision, recall, NDCG and drift detection).
• Strong Python skills with a grounding in software engineering best practices (CI/CD, testing, code reviews etc).
• Experience developing solutions at scale on cloud platforms (Azure & AWS), containerisation and orchestration tools such as Kubernetes and Docker.
• Expertise in data engineering for AI: handling large-scale, unstructured, and multimodal data.
• Understanding of responsible AI principles, model interpretability and ethical considerations.
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to lead client projects, manage C-level stakeholders and establish requirements/architecture concepts.
• Experience in managing, coaching and developing junior members of a team and wider community.

Desirable:

• Demonstrable experience with modern deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, TensorFlow), fine-tuning or distillation of LLMs (e.g. GPT, Llama, Claude, Gemini), machine learning libraries (e.g. scikit-learn, XGBoost).
• Experience with data storage for AI, vector databases, semantic search and knowledge graphs.
• Actively contributes to open-source AI projects, research publications and industry events/websites.
• Familiarity with AI security, privacy, and compliance standards e.g. ISO42001.
• Experience of shaping commercial AI offerings, winning AI work and wider pre-sales support.

At Kainos, we believe in the power of diversity, equity and inclusion. We are committed to building a team that is as diverse as the world we live in, where everyone is valued, respected, and given an equal chance to thrive. We actively seek out talented people from all backgrounds, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, or any other characteristic that makes them who they are. We also believe every candidate deserves a level playing field.

Our friendly talent acquisition team is here to support you every step of the way, so if you require any accommodations or adjustments, we encourage you to reach out. We understand that everyone's journey is different, and by having a private conversation we can ensure that our recruitment process is tailored to your needs.