AI Lead Engineer

Location: Liverpool, England, United Kingdom; flexible hybrid working model

Company

hirify.global operates the Very digital retail platform, delivering products and experiences for millions of customers.

What you will do

• Design, build, and evolve the Agentic AI platform across frontend tooling, AI gateways, and backend LLM integrations.
• Own AI platform architecture, technical decisions, engineering standards, system design, code reviews, and technology spikes.
• Own platform SLAs, metrics, monitoring, root-cause investigations, technical risk, and technical debt.
• Translate requirements into prioritized technical deliverables with the AI Technical Product Owner.
• Improve GitLab CI/CD pipelines and promote DevSecOps, security, reliability, and cost-efficient cloud operations.
• Coach engineers from junior to senior levels and collaborate with architects and engineering managers on the technology roadmap.

Requirements

• Experience in a Senior or Principal AWS Platform Engineering role.
• Expert-level, hands-on Terraform and Infrastructure as Code development.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, and maintaining Agentic AI platforms, including frontend tooling, AI gateways, and LLM backend integrations.
• Expert AWS knowledge covering VPC, EC2, ECS, ECR, Fargate, S3, Route 53, RDS, DynamoDB, API Gateway, Lambda, Transit Gateway, EBS, EFS, AWS Config, and the AWS CLI.
• Strong GitLab CI pipeline development and administration skills; GitLab administration experience is advantageous.
• AWS security tooling experience, a security-first mindset, excellent Linux administration skills, and development experience in Python and/or other languages.
• Experience defining best practices, technical standards, and platform designs at enterprise scale.
• Strong communication skills, the ability to explain complex ideas to technical and non-technical stakeholders, and extensive internal and external stakeholder management experience.
• Thorough knowledge of AWS cost optimization and efficient cloud infrastructure operations.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible hybrid working model and an inclusive environment.
• £6,500 flexible benefits allowance, 30 days of holiday plus bank holidays, and matched pension contributions up to 6%.
• LinkedIn Learning access, performance- and business-related bonus potential, and up to 25% discount on Very.co.uk.
• Successful candidates must complete credit, CIFAS, Right to Work, and, where specifically required, DBS checks.

Hiring process

• Talent acquisition screening followed by CV review by the hiring manager if progressed.
• One-stage process: a one-hour face-to-face interview with the hiring team covering relevant experience and competency questions.
• Reasonable adjustments are available; candidates should disclose relevant information before required checks are undertaken.