Senior Applied AI Engineer

Location: London, UK

Company

Scale AI develops reliable AI systems, high-quality data, and full-stack technologies for enterprises and governments building, deploying, and overseeing AI applications.

What you will do

• Own the AI layer of production systems for public sector clients, including agents, model integration, and backend services.
• Build production agents with reliable tool calling, guardrails, and observability.
• Select and design evaluations for client-specific risks and apply context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, model adaptation, and inference optimization.
• Investigate production regressions, lead root-cause analysis, and implement preventative changes.
• Lead workstream planning, manage client expectations, and act as the technical point of contact for AI performance on live data.
• Turn recurring client work into reusable tooling and guidance while mentoring engineers through reviews, pairing, and delegated ownership.

Requirements

• Backend engineering experience taking AI/ML systems into production and keeping them reliable.
• End-to-end ownership of the AI behavior of a production system rather than delivery of a component scoped by another team.
• Hands-on evaluation design connecting model behavior to real-world outcomes and catching regressions.
• Ability to work directly with clients and explain model behavior and trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Practical knowledge of regulated or sensitive data and auditability requirements.
• Experience leading root-cause analysis on production AI or ML systems.

Nice to have

• Sovereign or on-premise deployment experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on AI systems supporting important public-sector decisions and applications.
• Inclusive and equal opportunity workplace with reasonable accommodations available during the application and recruiting process.
• Scale AI works with enterprises, governments, and industry organizations on production AI applications.

Hiring process

• Candidates may not be reconsidered for the same role until a 90-day waiting period has passed after an evaluation.
• Applicants requiring disability-related assistance or reasonable accommodation may contact accommodations@scale.com.