Software AI Engineer

Role: Software AI Engineer - Contract
Location: London | Hybrid - 3/4 days in client office.Industry: Financial Services / Banking
Start Date: Nov 2026
Agreed Contract Rate (ACR): £308.33 per day
Payroll provider: Rockford Payroll Info for Contingent Workers – Rockford Pay Daily Rate: £400 Inside IR35
Daily Rate breakdown
Traditional Daily Rate: Up to £400 per day, dependent on experience
Equivalent Annual Salary: £71,531.56 + £8,633.12 holiday pay

The Role
We are looking for experienced Software AI Engineers to join a leading global financial services organisation, working on innovative AI-driven solutions and next-generation digital platforms. This is an exciting opportunity to develop and enhance intelligent AI agents, copilots and machine learning applications within a large-scale enterprise environment. You will work across software engineering, Generative AI, cloud technologies and data platforms, helping to build secure, scalable and production-ready AI solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop and maintain AI-powered applications, intelligent agents and copilot solutions using Python.
  
• Build and integrate APIs, agent tools and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to connect AI applications with enterprise systems.
  
• Develop retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, including document ingestion, embeddings, indexing and retrieval.
  
• Build and maintain data processing pipelines using Databricks and Apache Spark.
  
• Support the development, testing and deployment of machine learning models through MLOps pipelines.
  
• Develop user-facing AI interfaces, including streaming interactions and human-in-the-loop workflows.
  
• Implement automated testing, AI model evaluations and CI/CD processes to ensure application quality and reliability.
  
• Troubleshoot technical issues, optimise performance and maintain secure, scalable cloud-native applications.
  
• Collaborate with cross-functional engineering, data science and product teams to deliver high-quality AI solutions.
  

Experience & Skills Required

• 3+ years of commercial software engineering experience, with a strong background in application development and system design.
  
• Strong proficiency in Python, with experience in at least one additional language such as Java, TypeScript or SQL.
  
• Experience developing and integrating APIs, microservices and event-driven applications.
  
• Working knowledge of Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), RAG, prompt engineering and AI agent frameworks.
  
• Experience working with large datasets and data processing technologies such as Apache Spark.
  
• Strong understanding of software testing, CI/CD, application security and operational resilience.
  
• Practical experience with cloud-native technologies, containers and Kubernetes.
  
• Experience working within Agile development environments.
  
• Understanding of secure software development practices and responsible AI principles.
  

Nice to Have

• Experience with AWS cloud services.
  
• Hands-on experience with Databricks and MLOps frameworks.
  
• Knowledge of Model Context Protocol (MCP) and AI agent orchestration.
  
• Experience with AI evaluation frameworks, LLM-as-a-judge techniques and automated regression testing.
  
• Familiarity with OpenTelemetry, observability and distributed tracing.
  
• Experience developing AI-powered copilots or enterprise GenAI applications.
  
• Exposure to financial services, banking or other highly regulated environments.
  
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools.
  

Connect to your career at Deloitte
Deloitte drives progress. Using our vast range of expertise, we help our clients' become leaders wherever they choose to compete. To do this, we invest in outstanding people. We build teams of future thinkers, with diverse talents and backgrounds, and empower them all to reach for and achieve more.
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