Lead AI Engineer

Role Overview

• Lead the design and build of Lumi's AI capabilities, from real-time computer vision pipelines to LLM-driven features, with a strong focus on accuracy, reliability and real-world performance.
• Guide, mentor, grow and support a team of AI Engineers, fostering skill growth and ensuring engineering and research best practices.
• Own the journey from ideation to operation: frame problems, direct applied research and prototyping, then harden the winners into tested, monitored, production-grade services.
• Ensure quality through rigorous evaluation frameworks, thorough code reviews, automated testing and adherence to high development standards.
• Optimise models and inference for accuracy, latency and cost, and own the operational side of AI in production: monitoring, drift detection, versioning and continuous improvement of deployed models.
• Stay updated on the rapidly evolving AI landscape (models, frameworks, tooling and research), and make recommendations for continuous improvement. This covers both the product and the development process itself: you will champion AI-assisted engineering tools such as Claude Code and agentic workflows, and set the standard for how your team uses them to move faster without sacrificing quality.
• Coordinate with Backend Engineers, Frontend Engineers, and Design teams along with the CTO and other Leads to ensure seamless integration and delivery of features. Collaborating with the CEO on any prototyping requirements and wider company initiatives.
• Lead the successful delivery of projects within deadlines, ensuring alignment with business objectives against roadmaps and deadlines. Delivery leadership means transparency as much as momentum: you surface blockers, risks and things that simply aren't working as early and as loudly as you report wins, solving issues quickly at your level or escalating them without delay, and you keep adapting how the team delivers as engineering practice rapidly changes.

Requirements

• Minimum of 5-6 years of experience as an AI/ML Engineer with a strong focus on shipping models to production, with at least 2 years experience in a Leadership/Mentoring role.
• Proven track record of taking AI systems from research or prototype through to scalable, reliable production deployment.
• Proficiency in Python, PyTorch (or equivalent), Git, Docker and modern ML tooling.
• Experience in computer vision, such as object detection, tracking, pose estimation or video understanding.
• Experience with MLOps practices: containerised deployment, CI/CD for models, model versioning, monitoring and CPU/GPU infrastructure in the cloud and/or at the edge.
• Experience building with LLMs and foundation models: fine-tuning, retrieval, agentic workflows and structured outputs, with the evaluation discipline to prove they work.
• Strong grounding in data: dataset curation, annotation pipelines, evaluation methodology and metrics design.
• Understanding of real-time inference on streaming data such as live video, and the optimisation techniques it demands (e.g. ONNX, TensorRT, quantisation).
• Knowledge of API design and deploying models as services that integrate with wider backend systems.
• Confidence in software engineering fundamentals: testing, project structure, code quality and disciplined review. You hold strong opinions on what good engineering looks like, loosely held enough to evolve them as agentic workflows rapidly change how software gets built, and you can lead a team through that change without letting standards slip.
• Excellent communication, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities, with a collaborative mindset.

Tech Stack

• Cloud
• Docker
• Python
• PyTorch

Benefits

• Competitive salary depending on applicant experience and skill level.
• Stock Options We want our team to be a part of our success and offer all permanent team members stock options
• Holiday 27 days + Bank Holidays + Birthday off + Company closure between Christmas and New Year
• BUPA health insurance for you and your family
• Pension Contribution 8% from us and 1% from our employees
• Flexible working with an 8am-10am start and 4-6pm finish
• Enhanced Parental Leave
• Hybrid working, with time in our Bristol HQ when required