Applied AI Engineer in London

Arena is a digital entertainment company building platforms people genuinely love and we build them differently. Since 2021, our portfolio has grown to include MetaWin, WOW Vegas, BetZoo Media, Hit.com, and Rolla, with further brands in development. Our teams operate across London, Malta, Gibraltar, and Miami. AI isn't something we bolt on; it's the foundation we build from. We design and build AI-first platforms from the ground up, using modern infrastructure, distributed systems, and emerging AI tooling to move faster and build better products.

We’re growing our core engineering team with new opportunities for Applied AI Engineers and we’re deliberately hiring at an early-career level. We want engineers who have grown up building with AI, who reach for LLM tooling instinctively, and who use it to punch above their weight on complexity.

This is a frontline engineering role. You’ll be embedded directly in the product and engineering team, deploying AI capabilities into the core of our platforms, not prototyping in isolation, but shipping into production fast. This is not a research role. You’ll work directly with product and engineering leads, own what you build, and be trusted to make real decisions without hand-holding.

What You’ll Work On:

• Building AI-powered product features used by real users at scale
• Developing LLM-powered systems, internal tooling, and automation workflows
• Deploying AI agents that solve real operational and product problems
• Integrating multiple model providers and AI infrastructure layers
• Building backend services that support AI-driven applications
• Rapid prototyping and shipping new ideas into production quickly
• Improving engineering velocity through AI-native development workflows

What We’re Really Looking For:

• Agency & Product Sense: You don’t wait to be told what to do. You understand what users want, you understand what the business needs, and you connect those two things without being asked.
• AI as a Force Multiplier: You use AI to move faster and take on problems that would otherwise be beyond reach.
• Quality Without Compromise: Fast doesn’t mean sloppy. You think things through before you ship.

AI Tooling We Work With: We actively experiment with modern AI engineering ecosystems. Familiarity with any of the following is a strong signal:

• Engineering Tools: Claude Code, Codex, OpenRouter, OpenCode, Cursor
• Models: Claude, Kimi, Qwen, Frontier and open-source LLMs

Technical Foundation: You likely have:

• A strong software engineering foundation
• Comfort working across backend systems and APIs
• Experience shipping real software, not just writing it
• 1–2 years of professional or serious personal project experience
• Genuine curiosity about how AI systems work in production

This Role Is Probably NOT For You If:

• You prefer slow-moving, highly structured environments
• You want rigid processes and detailed briefs before you can start
• You’re primarily interested in AI research rather than shipping products
• You rely on AI to do your thinking for you rather than sharpen it

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary for level of experience
• A genuine learning environment at the frontier of applied AI engineering
• Direct access to senior engineers and product leadership
• Freedom to experiment with new tooling and the trust to ship
• International team culture across London, Gibraltar, and Miami

Arena is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to building diverse, inclusive teams and welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, regardless of where or how they learned to build.