Staff Engineer (Data/AI)

TL;DR

Staff Engineer (Data/AI): Driving architecture and technical strategy for the Data domain with an accent on transactional-to-analytical data pipelines and AI integration. Focus on architecting infrastructure for LLM orchestration, RAG, and real-time model inference at scale while mentoring technical leadership.

Location: Remote. Note: Visa sponsorship is not available.

Salary: £100,000 - £120,000

Company

hirify.global provides MIS and school management tools to over 12,000 schools, focusing on transforming school operations through actionable data insights.

What you will do

• Define and evangelize target architectures bridging transactional, analytical, and AI systems.
• Lead the end-to-end data lifecycle, from OLTP schema design to OLAP governance and analytics.
• Partner with Product Directors and Technical Leads to align commercial goals with engineering deliverables.
• Architect infrastructure for LLM orchestration, RAG, and real-time model inference.
• Mentor and coach Technical Leads and Senior Engineers on architectural excellence.
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to shape broader technology strategy and resolve systemic bottlenecks.

Requirements

• Must have the right to work in the UK as visa sponsorship is not provided.
• Extensive experience overseeing data architecture and delivering outcomes across OLAP domains.
• Strong understanding of data modeling techniques and distributed systems in cloud-native environments like Snowflake.
• Practical knowledge of DataOps principles, CI/CD for data, and pipeline orchestration.
• Demonstrable experience in optimizing SaaS platform spend and financial forecasting.
• Experience communicating and influencing across both technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience with AI/ML Engineering, MLOps, and model deployment.
• Direct experience with LLM Ops, prompt engineering at scale, and token cost optimization.
• Knowledge of federated learning or privacy-enhancing technologies.

Culture & Benefits

• 32 days of holiday (including bank holidays) plus extra company-wide days.
• Private dental insurance and comprehensive wellness benefits via AIG Smart Health.
• Salary sacrifice pension scheme provided by Scottish Widows.
• Enhanced maternity, adoption, and paternity pay.
• Dedicated professional development budget for CPD and upskilling.
• Flexible working environment with a focus on wellbeing and mental health support.

Hiring process

• Phone screen
• 1st stage interview
• 2nd stage interview