Principal Software Engineer - AI Engineering Lead

Location: Belfast, UK; hybrid work with attendance at the Belfast office 2 days a week. Candidates must be based in Northern Ireland.

Salary: £85,000–£95,000 per year plus benefits.

Company

A large financial technology business supporting millions of businesses and tens of billions of transactions annually across more than 175 countries, with Belfast as a key engineering hub.

What you will do

• Shape and lead AI engineering strategy across a multi-team platform organisation.
• Evaluate AI activity and select high-value tools, workflows, skills, and agents for adoption.
• Lead tiger teams with architects, product managers, and subject matter experts to deliver AI use cases.
• Embed AI safely into CI/CD, testing, release engineering, and the wider SDLC.
• Define engineering efficiency metrics and measure the impact of changes.
• Champion responsible AI, including security, data protection, governance, human oversight, and engineer coaching.

Requirements

• 10–15 years of hands-on software engineering experience, with continued involvement in coding.
• Recent commercial experience driving AI adoption in a company that has committed strongly to AI.
• Fluency with modern AI engineering tools and concepts, including Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, agents, MCP, prompt engineering, and context engineering.
• End-to-end understanding of the SDLC, from planning and design through CI/CD and production.
• Quality-first mindset appropriate for systems that cannot fail.
• Confident communication with engineers, architects, product professionals, and senior leaders.
• Based in Northern Ireland and able to work from the Belfast office 2 days a week.

Nice to have

• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated industry.
• Hands-on experience with LLM frameworks, RAG, or evaluation tooling.
• Experience implementing developer productivity or DORA-style metrics.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid working with 2 days per week in the Belfast office.
• Access to Copilot and multiple LLMs, with freedom to experiment and scale effective solutions.
• Principal-level technical leadership with influence but no line management.
• Direct support from senior leadership focused on measurable change rather than pilots.
• Strong benefits package and work on platforms used by millions of businesses worldwide.

Hiring process

• Informal conversation with senior leadership, followed by a strategy-focused discussion with a director and an AI specialist.
• No coding test; the process is intended to move quickly.
• Applications can be made by connecting with Chanel Gillen on LinkedIn or emailing chanel@hirify.globalpeople.com.