Lead Full-Stack AI Engineer

We are supporting an established international technology organisation that is investing heavily in the next phase of digital transformation.

The business is an international giant. As the transformation continues to progress, they are looking for a hands-on Full Stack AI Engineer who can take genuine ownership of a product, from a development standpoint.

A particularly interesting part of the role is the opportunity to help drive AI-assisted software engineering beyond your immediate team.

The organisation is actively exploring how modern AI tools and agentic workflows can improve engineering productivity, and they're looking for someone who can help turn that into practical, repeatable ways of working.

The Opportunity

You’ll operate as a

Lead Full Stack AI Engineer , taking ownership of critical development work while contributing to architecture, cloud infrastructure and engineering standards.

You’ll work closely with senior technical stakeholders, challenge decisions where appropriate, and help establish better development practices across the wider engineering organisation.

You’ll still be a developer first. The AI element is about using modern tooling to multiply engineering output and helping other developers adopt these approaches effectively.

Key Responsibilities

• Take end-to-end ownership of software solutions across development, testing, documentation, deployment and production support.
• Build and maintain scalable backend services using

Java and Spring Boot .

• Develop and work with relational data models using

Postgre SQL .

• Contribute to frontend development where required while maintaining a strong backend focus.
• Work with cloud infrastructure and containerised environments, particularly around deployment, scaling and troubleshooting.
• Diagnose complex issues across application code, infrastructure and production environments.
• Contribute to architectural decisions alongside senior engineering colleagues.
• Establish and improve development standards, engineering practices and code quality.
• Use AI-assisted development tools extensively to accelerate implementation, testing and problem solving.
• Experiment with and apply agentic AI frameworks and workflows within the software development lifecycle.
• Help other engineers adopt effective AI-assisted development practices through knowledge sharing, mentoring and practical enablement.
• Contribute to wider AI and digital initiatives across the organisation.
• Act as a technical sparring partner, constructively challenging assumptions and identifying opportunities to simplify or improve solutions.
• This is an important part of the role, but you are not being hired as an AI Engineer

The organisation is looking for an engineer who understands that AI can fundamentally change how software is developed and operated.

You’ll be expected to already use AI coding tools in your day-to-day workflow and have a genuine interest in taking this further. Experience with areas such as:

• Coding agents and agentic workflows
• LLM-powered development tools
• Agent orchestration and tool use
• Context management
• Automated development and testing workflows
• AI-enabled developer productivity

The ideal person knows when to let AI do the heavy lifting and, equally importantly, when not to trust its output.

Strong engineering judgement, code review and validation remain essential.

What We're Looking For

• 3+ years professional experience as a Full Stack or Backend-focused Software Engineer.
• Strong commercial experience with Java and Spring Boot.
• Solid experience with Postgre SQL and relational databases.
• Strong understanding of software development fundamentals and production-grade engineering.
• Experience taking ownership across development, testing and deployment.
• Experience working with cloud environments and/or containerised applications.
• Ability to troubleshoot issues across both application code and infrastructure.
• Practical experience using AI coding tools as part of your regular development workflow.
• Strong communication skills and the confidence to engage with senior technical stakeholders.
• Nice to have

5+ years of professional software engineering experience.

• Experience with Azure or another major cloud platform.
• Experience with messaging or event-driven architectures.
• Exposure to microservices environments.
• Experience with infrastructure troubleshooting, scaling and production operations.
• Experience helping other engineers adopt AI-assisted development practices.
• The Person

This role will suit someone who is naturally hands-on, autonomous and technically curious.

You’ll have plenty of freedom to make decisions, but that comes with accountability.

The team needs someone who can take a problem, understand it properly, develop a solution and see it through to production without needing constant direction.

You’ll also need to be comfortable challenging ideas.

If you see a better technical approach, you’re expected to explain why and contribute to the discussion rather than simply follow instructions.

The strongest candidates will be

• Ownership-driven rather than task-driven
• Comfortable operating independently
• Curious about emerging technology
• Pragmatic rather than obsessed with technology for its own sake
• Strong enough technically to challenge senior engineers constructively
• Calm when dealing with production problems
• Methodical about testing and validating AI-generated code
• Interested in helping other engineers become more effective
• Focused on continuous improvement rather than simply maintaining the status quo

Why Join?

• Take genuine ownership of a growing platform.
• Work closely with senior engineering and architecture stakeholders.
• Influence technical decisions and engineering standards.
• Play a meaningful role in the adoption of AI-assisted software development.
• Combine hands-on engineering with technical enablement and mentoring.
• Join an organisation investing seriously in modernising its engineering capabilities.
• Potential progression into broader technical leadership as the team and platform continue to grow.
• What's on Offer
• Yearly bonus.
• Hybrid working model (3 days per week onsite)
• Significant autonomy and technical ownership
• Opportunity to shape AI-assisted engineering practices beyond your immediate team
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