AI Engineer - Retail (LH)

Every week we move millions of products to our customers at record speeds. Brilliant customer experiences at this kind of pace require fresh and appealing products to be available whenever and however our customers shop with us. In this area of our business, we help to make sure that happens. By engineering innovative, smart technology, we put the tools in our colleagues’ hands to power a global supply chain. Whether it’s wine from New Zealand or milk from the local dairy farm, our tech performs. We solve problems at scale. We process billions of records, predicting and planning to make our customers' lives easier. We keep ours and stores operating smoothly around the clock, because what’s important to our customers is important to us.

We are looking for an AI Engineer to work within a team engaged in delivering and running multi brand AI powered telephony and chat system in Azure. The role involves ensuring the scalability, reliability, security, and efficiency of the application.

About the role

• Help lead on the delivery of best in class Generative & Agentic AI services to Sainsbury’s.
• Deploy and configure production systems, with a particular focus on automation, scalability and security.
• Collaborate with other Engineers to design, implement and evolve the system.
• Engage in the expansion of the evaluation framework, collaborating with product owners and architects to ensure that solutions help customers and achieve the logistics business goals.
• Monitor new features/functionality and assess their Ops implications to continuously improve services.
• Discover and recommend ways to improve reliability and efficiency.
• Maintain an overarching service dashboard and reporting.
• Produce and maintain documentation of support processes & resolutions to known operational issues.
• Participate in a 24/7 on call rota as required.

Essential Criteria

• Proven Azure commercial experience in AI Foundry, ACS / Telephony, Voice Live, Azure ML.
• Proven industry experience with Python, Javascript, Typescript, React, Redux, Java.
• Experience with LLM’s including realtime models.
• Experience with Docker, Container Apps, containerised distributed systems, Terraform, Kafka, New Relic, MCP, Websockets.
• Experienced in writing automated tests and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Proven experience of source and version control tools such as GitHub.
• Be experienced working with Agile delivery teams in a fast paced, DevOps environment.
• Be diligent and positive about tracking (JIRA), system monitoring, security & auditing.
• Feed your insights to continuously improve the platform.
• Be an active contributing part of an agile development team.
• The ability to engage with and influence stakeholders.

Desirable

• Familiarity with Genesys would be a positive.

As well as lots of on‑job training and endless opportunities, you’ll get:

• Colleague discount across our multi‑brands – Sainsbury’s, Argos and Habitat.
• Holiday allowance.
• Bonus scheme.
• Pension plan.
• Special offers on gym memberships, restaurants, holidays, retail vouchers and more.

Work‑life balance is important to us, so we offer our colleagues as much flexibility as possible in line with the needs of their role. We trust them to decide how, where and when they work, combining remote and collaborative working with a flexible approach to hours, giving them plenty of time and space for life outside of work whilst delivering against our business goals.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new‑whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working.

When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

• Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day.
• We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover.
• You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance‑related bonus of up to 10% of salary, depending on how we perform.
• Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday.
• We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well as access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers.
• And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.
• Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).