Senior AI Engineer in Birmingham

Aveni is redefining how financial institutions use AI. We build real, production-ready agentic systems that reshape how banks, advisers and financial services firms operate, replacing fragmented processes with intelligent, end-to-end workflows. We have been recognised as Fintech of the Year for two consecutive years and awarded Best Specialist Technology Service at the Professional Adviser Awards 2025. Backed by leading investors including Puma Private Equity, and commercially supported by Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide Building Society, we previously completed one of Scotland's largest Series A rounds. Since then, we’ve continued to grow rapidly as adoption of AI in financial services accelerates, and we’re now scaling our team to meet that demand.

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior AI Engineer (FinLLM / NLP) to help drive the next generation of AI systems powering financial services. This role focuses on developing, fine-tuning and deploying advanced language models that operate at production scale within highly regulated environments. You’ll work alongside our NLP team, software engineers, and product leaders to build cutting-edge solutions that transform how financial organisations use AI. This is a hands-on role where you’ll shape both the technical direction and practical deployment of large language models and NLP systems within our platform.

What You’ll Do

• Build and optimise LLM-powered systems
• Architect, fine-tune and optimise machine learning models including LLMs and classical ML approaches
• Experiment with modern architectures such as Transformers and Mixture-of-Experts
• Apply efficient training and fine-tuning techniques including LoRA and parameter-efficient methods
• Develop robust evaluation approaches to measure model quality and reliability
• Develop scalable AI systems
• Build and deploy production-grade NLP pipelines and services
• Ensure models operate efficiently with low latency and high availability
• Integrate models into scalable cloud infrastructure and real-world applications

Data strategy and model training

• Lead the acquisition, processing and governance of large structured and unstructured datasets
• Apply exploratory data analysis and validation techniques to improve training pipelines
• Ensure data privacy and governance standards suitable for financial services

Engineering best practices

• Contribute to DevOps and MLOps pipelines
• Implement robust version control, testing and CI/CD workflows
• Support reliable deployment and monitoring of models in production environments

Technical leadership

• Mentor engineers and contribute to the technical growth of the team
• Work closely with product, engineering and data teams to deliver AI solutions
• Stay at the forefront of AI and NLP research, applying new approaches where they add value

What We’re Looking For

Essential experience

• Significant experience building, training and deploying machine learning models
• Strong Python skills with experience using NumPy, Pandas, SciPy and modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow
• Experience working with large-scale unstructured data
• Experience building and deploying production-ready NLP systems
• Familiarity with API integrations and data acquisition pipelines
• Experience implementing software engineering best practices including Git and agile development
• Experience working with cloud environments (preferably AWS)

Nice to have

• Experience with containerisation technologies such as Docker or Kubernetes
• Experience with frameworks such as vLLM or NeMo
• Knowledge of financial services NLP applications
• Experience designing evaluation methodologies for LLM outputs
• Experience building intelligent agents or multi-agent systems

Skills and mindset

• Strong analytical problem-solving skills
• Ability to design scalable, production-ready AI systems
• Clear communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Passion for AI innovation and continuous learning
• Leadership and mentoring capability

Qualifications

• MSc or equivalent experience in a relevant field such as AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or Data Science

Join Us in Making a Difference

At Aveni, we believe that diversity drives innovation. We’ve built our business to ensure an inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their best work. If you’re passionate about technology and its ability to drive positive change for the future of financial services, we’d love to hear from you. Even if you don’t meet 100% of requirements, we’d like to hear from you anyway if you believe you’d fit in. Apply now to join us on our mission to transform the financial services industry through AI.

Benefits at Aveni

What you’ll love:

• Remote-first working across the UK
• Work abroad policy
• Co-working spaces available
• 34 days holiday (including flexible bank holidays) and your birthday off
• Company-wide off-sites
• Optional Personal Development Plan
• Flexible benefits platform
• Protection essentials including Life Insurance, Income Protection, Critical Illness cover, and Pension (up to 5% matched employer contribution with optional increased contributions)
• Private health and dental care
• Potential share options
• Enhanced family leave