Lead AI Developer

Hitachi Digital LLC; Birmingham; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading digital transformation company in Birmingham is seeking an experienced Lead AI Developer to spearhead new AI initiatives. This role focuses on designing and implementing production-grade AI models, including working with Google Cloud Platform. Candidates must possess strong programming skills, deep experience in AI/ML, and a passion for innovation. The company offers competitive benefits and a flexible working environment, promoting a culture of inclusion and personal growth.

Benefits

Comprehensive health and wellbeing support

Flexible working arrangements

Competitive benefits packages

Qualifications

• 7+ years in AI/ML development including production delivery of LLM-powered applications.
• Hands-on experience with Gemini Enterprise in real-world deployments.
• Strong programming skills in Python and experience building REST/gRPC services.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and implement production-grade AI models and algorithms.
• Lead delivery of Gemini Enterprise solutions defining agent roles and toolchains.
• Enhance and scale current Agentic AI capabilities for improved performance.

Skills

AI/ML development

Programming in Python

Problem-solving skills

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s or master’s in computer science or related field

Tools

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Python

TensorFlow

Job description

Overview

We’re Hitachi Digital, a company at the forefront of digital transformation and the fastest growing division of Hitachi Group. We’re crucial to the company’s strategy and ambition to become a premier global player in the massive and fast-moving digital transformation market.

Our group companies, including GlobalLogic, Hitachi Digital Services, Hitachi Vantara and more, offer comprehensive services that span the entire digital lifecycle, from initial idea to full-scale operation and the infrastructure to run it on. Hitachi Digital represents One Hitachi, integrating domain knowledge and digital capabilities, and harnessing the power of the entire portfolio of services, technologies, and partnerships, to accelerate synergy creation and make real-world impact for our customers and society as a whole.

Imagine the sheer breadth of talent it takes to unleash a digital future. We don’t expect you to ‘fit’ every requirement – your life experience, character, perspective, and passion for achieving great things in the world are equally as important to us.

The Team

Hitachi Digital is a leader in digital transformation, leveraging advanced AI technologies to drive innovation and efficiency across our global operating companies (OpCos) and corporate functions. We are seeking an experienced Lead AI Developer to spearhead new AI initiatives and strengthen our Agentic AI capabilities. You will build new AI products and refine existing models to meet evolving business needs, with a primary focus on GCP and Gemini Enterprise.

The Role

• Design, develop, and implement production-grade AI models, agents, and algorithms using Agentic AI frameworks (multi‑agent orchestration, tool‑use, memory, judge/ranker patterns).
• Lead delivery of Gemini Enterprise solutions (including Agent Workspace/Agent Builder or equivalent), defining agent roles, toolchains, and safety guardrails for enterprise workflows.
• Drive new AI initiatives across OpCos and corporate functions, ensuring secure integration with existing systems, data sources, and processes.
• Enhance and scale current Agentic AI capabilities for improved performance, latency, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Implement RAG (retrieval‑augmented generation) pipelines—document ingestion, embeddings, vector search, grounding, and citations.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, data, and business teams to translate requirements into high‑impact AI features and APIs.
• Establish LLMOps/MLOps practices (CI/CD, versioning, evaluation harnesses, rollback, prompt/test suites) and AI Ops observability (latency, accuracy, cost, drift/bias).
• Troubleshoot complex production issues across models, agents, tooling, and integrations; drive root‑cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Produce clear technical documentation—architecture decisions, model cards, playbooks, and best practices; mentor junior engineers and lead code/design reviews.
• Stay current on the latest developments in LLMs/SLMs, embeddings, vector databases, safety/guardrails, and evaluation methodologies.

What you’ll bring

Requirements (Must‑Have)

• Bachelor’s or master’s in computer science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or related field.
• 7+ years in AI/ML development, including production delivery of LLM‑powered applications.
• Hands‑on experience with Gemini Enterprise in real‑world deployments (prompting, tool‑use, safety, evaluation, cost/latency tuning).
• Deep experience with Agentic AI frameworks (multi‑agent design, orchestration, tool/plugin ecosystems, agent memory, judge/critic patterns).
• Primary experience on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including Vertex AI (Pipelines, Endpoints/Model Serving, Model Registry/Monitoring, Vector Search) and secure service integration (IAM, Secret Manager, VPC‑SC).
• Strong programming skills in Python (preferred) and one of Java/C++/TypeScript; proficiency building REST/gRPC services and event‑driven workflows.
• Prior, demonstrable experience with Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), including grounding/RAG and evaluation.
• Practical expertise with AI/ML frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) and NLP techniques.
• Solid understanding of MLOps/LLMOps and AI Ops (observability, explainability, bias/drift monitoring, rollback strategies).
• Excellent problem‑solving skills and the ability to work independently and within cross‑functional teams; strong written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience integrating agents with enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, ITSM, Finance, Procurement) via APIs and eventing (Pub/Sub).
• Background in vector databases, embeddings, and knowledge graphs (e.g., Neo4j) for contextual intelligence.
• Exposure to GPU‑based training/inference, prompt optimization, and cost‑aware routing/ensembling of LLMs/SLMs.
• Familiarity with orchestration libraries and evaluation tooling (e.g., LangChain/Graph, custom harnesses, judge/ranker patterns).
• Certifications such as Google Professional Cloud Architect or Machine Learning Engineer.

What Success Looks Like (First 6–12 Months)

• Launch of production Agentic AI features on GCP with measurable improvements in user satisfaction and business outcomes.
• Established LLMOps/AI Ops dashboards and SLIs/SLOs (quality, latency, cost), with automated testing and safe rollback.
• Documented guardrails and governance artifacts (model cards, policy checks, audit logs) meeting enterprise compliance standards.
• Demonstrable reduction in latency/cost and uplift in answer quality via prompt tuning, retrieval optimization, and agent orchestration.

Core Competencies

• Architectural thinking with a product mindset—balancing innovation, reliability, and compliance.
• Operational excellence—instrumentation, telemetry, and continuous improvement.
• Collaboration & leadership—clear communication across engineering, data, product, and business stakeholders.
• Ownership & bias for action—ability to turn ambiguous problems into shipped AI capabilities.

Tools & Tech You’ll Use

• Cloud & AI: GCP, Vertex AI (Pipelines, Endpoints, Model Registry/Monitoring, Vector Search), Gemini Enterprise.
• Agentic AI: Multi‑agent orchestration, tool‑use frameworks, safety/guardrails, memory, judge/ranker patterns.
• Retrieval: Embeddings, vector databases, RAG pipelines with grounding and citations.
• Engineering: Python, Java/C++/TypeScript, REST/gRPC, Pub/Sub, CI/CD, containerized services.

About us

We’re a global, 1000-strong, diverse team of professional experts, promoting and delivering Social Innovation through our One Hitachi initiative (OT x IT x Product) and working on projects that have a real-world impact. We’re curious, passionate and empowered, blending our legacy of 110 years of innovation with our shaping our future. Here you’re not just another employee; you’re part of a tradition of excellence and a community working towards creating a digital future.

#LI-AP1

Fostering innovation through diverse perspectives

Hitachi is a global company operating across a wide range of industries and regions. One of the things that sets Hitachi apart is the diversity of our business and people, which drives our innovation and growth.

We are committed to building an inclusive culture based on mutual respect and merit-based systems. We believe that when people feel valued, heard, and safe to express themselves, they do their best work.

How we look after you

We help take care of your today and tomorrow with industry-leading benefits, support, and services that look after your holistic health and wellbeing. We’re also champions of life balance and offer flexible arrangements that work for you (role and location dependent). We’re always looking for new ways of working that bring out our best, which leads to unexpected ideas. So here, you’ll experience a sense of belonging, and discover autonomy, freedom, and ownership as you work alongside talented people you enjoy sharing knowledge with.

We’re proud to say we’re an equal opportunity employer and welcome all applicants for employment without attention to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran, age, disability status or any other protected characteristic. Should you need reasonable accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know so that we can do our best to set you up for success.

Georgia Venetsanakos

Empathy is important. When we love working with the people around us, we like coming into work and dealing with those people every day.

Lynda Brown

My experience has taught me to give people chances - it’s amazing to see how much they can flourish when you do.

Gregory Mason

I love to have discussions with employees and managers on what we can do to support the overall wellbeing of our teams.

Don’t wait to take charge of your career.

Prasanthi Sathyaprakash

Working as a group has always given me energy and kept me motivated, we can deliver amazing results as a collective.

Mehdi H. Choudhury

Hitachi’s commitment to sustainability and proactiveness to support clients as a social responsibility makes me excited about the future.

Kinga Wos-Ryske

Hitachi offers great work-life balance, and flexible working arrangements - from remote to hybrid. If you are interested in comprehensive and competitive perks and benefits, you will find it all here.

Georgia Venetsanakos

Empathy is important. When we love working with the people around us, we like coming into work and dealing with those people every day.

Lynda Brown

My experience has taught me to give people chances - it’s amazing to see how much they can flourish when you do.

Gregory Mason

I love to have discussions with employees and managers on what we can do to support the overall wellbeing of our teams.

Don’t wait to take charge of your career.

Prasanthi Sathyaprakash

Working as a group has always given me energy and kept me motivated, we can deliver amazing results as a collective.

Mehdi H. Choudhury

Hitachi’s commitment to sustainability and proactiveness to support clients as a social responsibility makes me excited about the future.

Kinga Wos-Ryske

Hitachi offers great work-life balance, and flexible working arrangements - from remote to hybrid. If you are interested in comprehensive and competitive perks and benefits, you will find it all here.