Principal AI Engineer

At Currys we’re united by one passion: to help everyone enjoy amazing technology. As the UK’s best-known retailer of tech, we’re proud of the service our customers receive – and it’s all down to our team of 25,000 caring and committed colleagues. Working as one team, we learn and grow together, celebrating the big and small moments that make every day amazing.

The Principal AI Engineer role is a senior hands-on technical role. It will be accountable for technical leadership and delivery on Currys Generative AI solutions and for the associated development and LLM Ops resources in the UK and India.

Role overview:

As part of this role, you’ll be responsible for:

1. Lead AI Engineering resources to define and deliver Gen AI solutions on our Azure platform.
2. Deliver solutions on other Gen AI platforms as prioritized by the AI Steering Committee and Transformation functions.
3. Build a formal LLM Ops process and capability and create associated standards in conjunction with our security and privacy teams.
4. Ensure delivery of robust and efficient Gen AI and ML operations and architectures.
5. Develop and implement patterns to ingest and store unstructured data in relation to Gen AI Customer and colleague interactions for operational and analytical purposes.
6. Develop and fine-tune embedding models to convert text, images, and other data types into dense vector representations.
7. Design and build models for intent recognition to understand user inputs and improve interaction with AI systems.
8. Develop and implement semantic search capabilities using vector embeddings to provide more accurate search results.
9. Implement techniques for model optimization, including performance tuning and resource management on Azure.
10. Deploy AI models into production environments using containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
11. Manage the scaling of AI solutions to handle varying loads, ensuring high availability and reliability.
12. Work with Data and Portfolio project leads to deliver data and AI-related projects.
13. Implement, maintain and evangelize best practices for AI and ML engineering.
14. Optimize performance, scalability, and efficiency of data pipelines and ML Ops processes.

This hands-on role will have accountability for the technical implementation and associated standards for Gen AI and ML solutions using approved toolsets in Currys. Specifically, it will be accountable for the successful adaptation and ongoing development of our Gen AI platform(s), ensuring compliance with business requirements and RAI principles.

You will need:

1. Ideally 7+ years of experience in machine learning and AI, with a significant portion dedicated to generative AI techniques.
2. Proven track record of deploying transformer-based models (e.g., GPT) and associated applications.
3. Proficiency in programming languages such as Python and strong experience with machine learning frameworks and libraries.
4. Experience in developing and deploying embedding models.
5. Knowledge of intent recognition and prompt engineering techniques and best practices.
6. Detailed up-to-date understanding of RAI and ethics principles and challenges.
7. Excellent written, oral communication and advocacy skills, with demonstrable experience of prioritizing effectively, managing diverse and multiple stakeholders.
8. Experience working, managing and leveraging resource and other benefits with third-party stakeholders.
9. Detailed understanding of SDLC & Engineering delivery methodology within a data and AI environment.

We know our people are the secret to our success. That’s why we’re always looking for ways to reward great work. You’ll find a host of benefits designed to work for you, including:

• Company Pension
• Company Bonus
• Private Medical

Join our team and we’ll be with you every step of the way, helping you develop the career you want with new opportunities, ongoing training, and skills for life.

Not only can you shape your own future, but you can help take charge of ours too. As the biggest recycler and repairer of tech in the UK, we’re in a position to make a real impact on people and the planet.

Every voice has a space at our table and we’re committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. We want to make sure you have a fair opportunity to show us your talents during our application process, so if you need any additional assistance with your application please email and we’ll do our best to help.

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