Forward Deployed Engineer in London

Blackstone& are a technical consultancy who specialise in digital transformation and complex technical deliveries. 15 years ago that meant Cloud adoption. 10 years ago it was DevOps. 5 years ago, SRE and platform engineering. We still cover all of that, but a lot of our work right now is AI adoption. And we mean actual AI adoption: in production, in Enterprises. Not just a vibe coded app on a local machine. The pace and impact of each wave keeps accelerating, but we think successful adoption still comes down to two things: people and constraints. What does transformation actually look like inside the limits of an organisation, and how do we bring the people along for it?

WHAT YOU'LL BRING

• Core Skills
• Solid back-end engineering foundations. You write code that others can read, test, and build on.
• Hands-on experience with AWS Bedrock, including model invocation, knowledge base integration, and deployment patterns within AWS environments.
• Experience with AWS AgentCore or equivalent agent orchestration tooling on AWS, building agents that are reliable enough for production use.
• A strong grasp of how large language models actually work: their failure modes, their sensitivities, and how to engineer systems around them.
• Proven experience building RAG systems end-to-end: chunking and embedding strategies, retrieval tuning, and grounding outputs in source data.
• The ability to build evaluation harnesses that measure what matters: quality, consistency, regression, and real-world performance.
• Context engineering instincts. You think carefully about what goes into a model's context window and why.
• Prompt writing as an engineering discipline: systematic, tested, version-controlled, and repeatable.
• Comfort working directly with enterprise clients in complex, regulated environments with real governance constraints.
• Nice to have
• Experience with production agentic systems: multi-step reasoning, tool use, memory, and safe orchestration in high-stakes settings.
• Familiarity with agentic design patterns specific to AWS, including Lambda-backed tools, Step Functions integration, or Bedrock Agents.
• Exposure to fine-tuning or domain adaptation of foundation models.

DAY TO DAY

• Architect and build AI systems on AWS Bedrock and AgentCore, covering RAG pipelines, knowledge bases, agent workflows and production APIs.
• Develop back-end integrations that connect AI capabilities to enterprise platforms securely and at scale.
• Own the evaluation layer, designing and running harnesses that give the delivery team and the client confidence in every release.
• Engineer prompts and context strategies that perform consistently in production, not just in testing.

Working with the Team & Customer

• Partner with delivery managers and architects to shape AI solutions that map to real client outcomes, not just technical possibilities.
• Engage confidently with enterprise stakeholders, translating technical decisions into language that makes sense for a regulated business environment.
• Share knowledge across the Blackstone& team: documentation, architecture decisions, and lessons learned from the field.

Raising the bar

• Maintain high engineering standards across everything you produce. Testing, documentation, and code quality are not optional extras.
• Bring new techniques and tools to the team when they are genuinely useful, grounded in evidence rather than novelty.
• Contribute to how Blackstone& builds and delivers AI. This is a practice in growth and your experience shapes it.

WHO WILL THRIVE HERE

• This engagement will suit you if you:
• Treat AI engineering as a craft: rigorous, iterative, and evidence-led.
• Are intellectually curious about what LLMs can and cannot do, and honest about the difference.
• Can work with real autonomy in fast-moving, ambiguous delivery environments.
• Are clear and direct when communicating with technical and non-technical audiences alike.
• Have operated in enterprise or regulated environments and understand what that means in practice.
• Want visibility, ownership, and the chance to shape something. Not just execute tickets.

ENGAGEMENT DETAILS

• This engagement is offered outside IR35, reflecting the genuine independence and expertise the role requires.
• Rate: Competitive.
• Outside IR35 - engaged as an independent contractor via your own limited company or umbrella.
• Initial contract length: 6 months, with extensions expected subject to performance and project progression.
• Hybrid working - a mix of remote and on-site with the client as the engagement requires.
• Start date: to be agreed - we are looking to move quickly for the right person.