Senior AI / ML Engineer

Senior AI / ML Engineer Location: Manchester, UK Working Pattern: Hybrid – 2 days per week onsite Contract: Contract Rate: £250–£350 per day Technology: GCP / Vertex AI Role: Senior AI / ML Engineer About the Role We are looking for an experienced Senior AI / ML Engineer to join a technology team in Manchester, working on the design, development and operation of production-grade AI and machine learning solutions. The role will focus on Generative AI, Agentic AI, MLOps and cloud-native AI engineering, taking solutions from experimentation through to secure, scalable production environments. You will work extensively with Python, PyTorch, Large Language Models, RAG, Agentic AI and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), helping build enterprise AI applications and scalable machine learning services. Key Responsibilities Design and develop enterprise AI applications using LLMs, transformer architectures, RAG and Agentic AI patterns.Build AI agents incorporating tool calling, memory, reasoning and workflow orchestration.Develop production-quality machine learning and deep learning solutions using Python and PyTorch.Build embedding, indexing, semantic retrieval and ranking pipelines.Develop secure APIs and microservices to integrate AI capabilities with enterprise platforms.Package and deploy models using Docker, Kubernetes, KServe and Vertex AI.Build and maintain CI/CD, continuous training and continuous monitoring pipelines.Implement model versioning, model registries and reproducible release processes.Monitor model quality, data quality, drift, latency and infrastructure performance.Optimise AI workloads for performance, scalability and cost, including GPU utilisation and autoscaling.Implement progressive deployment strategies including canary, shadow and blue/green deployments.Work closely with Product, Data Science, Platform, Architecture, Security and Risk teams.Contribute to technical architecture, engineering standards and reusable AI patterns. Essential Skills & Experience Strong commercial experience as an AI Engineer, ML Engineer or Machine Learning Engineer.Excellent Python development skills.Strong hands-on experience with PyTorch and deep learning.Experience working with LLMs and Generative AI.Strong production experience with RAG, embeddings, vector search and semantic retrieval.Experience developing Agentic AI solutions, including ReAct, tool calling, memory or orchestration.Strong knowledge of MLOps and production machine learning lifecycles.Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP).Experience with Vertex AI and cloud-based model deployment.Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.Strong API and microservices development experience.Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, monitoring and model deployment. Desirable Experience LangChain, LangGraph or LlamaIndexGKE / KubernetesKServeGitOps and infrastructure automationPrometheus, Grafana or DynatraceVector databases and retrieval systemsModel and feature registriesGPU optimisation and scalable model servingExperience working within regulated or enterprise environmentsUnderstanding of responsible AI, security, privacy and model governance Contract Details Role: Senior AI / ML Engineer Location: Manchester, UK Working: Hybrid – 2 days onsite per week Contract Type: Contract Day Rate: £250–£350 per day Cloud Platform: Google Cloud Platform (GCP) / Vertex AI Focus: Generative AI | Agentic AI | RAG | MLOps | Machine Learning | Cloud Engineering