Staff Software Engineer

Aveni Detect; City of Edinburgh; Remote; GBP 75,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first working

34 days holiday including birthday off

Work abroad policy

Private health and dental care

Optional Personal Development Plan

Job summary

A leading technology firm in the UK is seeking an experienced engineer to lead AI product development. This role requires strong technical leadership, hands-on AI/ML skills, and a deep understanding of Node.js and Python. The ideal candidate will have over 10 years of experience, capable of setting technical direction and ensuring compliance in a regulated environment. The position supports remote work across the UK and offers numerous benefits, including 34 days of holiday and a flexible benefits platform.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in engineering, particularly in AI/ML systems.
• Experience in setting technical direction and architectural decisions.
• Strong hands-on skills in AI/LLM, prompt engineering, and RAG.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the engineering squad.
• Lead AI-powered product development.
• Ensure compliance and quality of the produced software.

Skills

Technical leadership

AI/ML systems

Node.js

Python

AWS cloud-native development

Prompt engineering

Job description

The role

• Setting technical direction for your squad. Owning architectural decisions, managing technical risk, and representing the engineering perspective at our Architecture Review Board
• Leading AI-powered product development: designing LLM workflows, RAG pipelines, and agentic features that run on top of our AI platform in production, at scale
• Driving adoption of AI coding tools across the full SDLC, from planning and design through code review, testing, deployment and setting the bar for how the squad works
• Delivering production‑grade code across the full stack: Node.js or Python backends, event‑driven AWS architecture, and React where the squad needs it
• Mentoring and growing engineers across AI and full‑stack domains, through code reviews, design documents, and day‑to‑day pairing
• Collaborating with platform teams to consume shared capabilities and contribute reusable patterns back, not building one‑off solutions when a platform component will do
• Ensuring everything we ship is compliant‑by‑design, auditable, and built to the standards expected of software in FCA regulated financial services

Requirements

• A seasoned engineer with 10+ years of experience, including meaningful time building and operating AI/ML systems in production
• Real technical leadership. You've set direction, made architectural calls, mentored others, and influenced how a team builds, not just what it ships
• Strong hands‑on AI/LLM skills: prompt engineering, RAG, model evaluation and agent frameworks. You know how these work in production, not just in demos
• Deep expertise in Node.js or Python, with solid experience in the other; comfortable switching contexts depending on what the problem needs
• Cloud‑native development on AWS. Serverless, event‑driven, Lambda, with an instinct for well designed, maintainable systems
• A genuine curiosity about where AI is going and the judgment to separate signal from noise when recommending what to adopt
• An instinct for building responsibly. You care about auditability, compliance, and the downstream impact of what you ship

Benefits

• Remote‑first working across the UK
• Work abroad policy for when you want a change of scenery
• Co‑working spaces available if you want an office buzz sometimes
• 34 days holiday (including flexible bank holidays) and your birthday off
• Company‑wide off‑sites (yes, karaoke may happen)
• Optional Personal Development Plan
• Flexible benefits platform: you choose the benefits that matter most to you (not the company)
• Protection essentials, because we know they matter – Life Insurance, Income protection, critical illness cover, Pension (up to 5% matched employer contribution and optional increased contributions)
• Private health‑ and dental care for your peace of mind
• Potential share options, have a stake in what you’re building
• Enhanced family leave