Senior Applied AI Engineer Contract
Outside IR35 £700 - £900 per day DOE
6 months + likely extension
Oxfordshire (hybrid - 2 days p/w on site)
Our client is a rapidly scaling UK deep-tech company delivering advanced agentic AI capability. This role sits in their AI team, working with a commercial customer in biotech and pharma. They are hiring a Senior Applied AI Engineer to take ownership of the agentic AI systems underpinning their platform, on a contract basis, with genuine influence over how those systems are architected and delivered.
This role suits an engineer who designs and ships systems rather than assembling pre-built components, someone who cares more about how a system performs once it's live and under pressure than how impressive it looks in a demo.
What You'll Be Doing
Architecting and building multi-agent AI systems end-to-end, combining frameworks such as LangGraph or Haystack where they add value with bespoke orchestration, state management and tool-calling logic where a framework won't cut it
Writing production-grade code with reliability, latency and graceful failure handling designed in from the start rather than bolted on afterwards
Embedding LLMs and vision-language models into live reasoning, search, summarisation and task-execution workflows, backed by solid retrieval, memory and guardrail design
Deploying across cloud and on-premises environments, adapting your approach to each environment's security and connectivity constraints
Taking end-to-end ownership of production pipelines, from raw data ingestion through to live inference
Building the monitoring, evaluation and guardrail tooling that shows how a system is actually performing in the field
Setting technical standards for agentic AI within the team, establishing the patterns other engineers follow and leaving clear documentation behind
What We're Looking For
Robust software engineering, including developing LLM-powered or agentic systems, and a track record operating at senior/lead level
Strong engineering fundamentals: code that's clean, tested and built to last, not just prototypes that work once
Commercial track record building and owning multi-agent or agentic AI systems in live production settin...
Senior Applied AI Engineer in Didcot employer: Deerfoot Recruitment Solutions
Join a leading global technology consulting organisation that prioritises employee growth and innovation in the heart of London, Manchester, or Glasgow. With a strong emphasis on collaboration and cutting-edge projects, you'll have access to comprehensive benefits, a hybrid work culture, and opportunities to influence high-profile clients while developing your expertise in data and AI. This is not just a job; it's a chance to be part of a dynamic team that values your contributions and supports your professional journey.
Contact Details:
Deerfoot Recruitment Solutions Recruitment Team
