Senior Applied AI Engineer: Software

Fuzzy Labs is a fast growing, Applied AI engineering consultancy based in Manchester. We help organisations turn ambitious AI ideas into secure, reliable systems that work in the real world.

We work across the full AI engineering lifecycle, from research, discovery, experimentation and rapid prototypes through to production software, AI evaluation, cloud infrastructure and systems at scale. Our work spans innovative startups, global organisations, policing and secure government, giving our engineers the opportunity to solve genuinely difficult problems and see the impact of what they build.

We're growing, and we're building an engineering organisation for the next generation of AI. You'll work with modern AI technologies, strong software engineering practices and open-source tools, while having dedicated opportunities for R&D, learning and contributing back to the wider technical community.

We value strong engineering foundations, a drive to keep pace within a fast changing space, deep expertise, broad technical curiosity and a passion for continuous learning. You don't need experience with every technology we use - we're interested in what you know deeply, how you approach new problems, and how quickly you can learn.

Why join Fuzzy Labs?

• Work at the frontier of Applied AI: Build with rapidly evolving AI technologies and help determine how they should be used in production, leveraging Open Source solutions when needed and delivering AI with impact for our clients.
• Work that has real impact: Work directly with varied organisations solving meaningful problems, from innovative companies, AI security and AI safety to policing and secure government.
• Build and advise: Prototype, write production software, evaluate AI systems, deploy infrastructure and see solutions through into the real world. Advise and consult with customers on how to best leverage and utilise modern AI.
• Dedicated space to explore: Client delivery is complemented by R&D, experimentation, open-source work and the ability to publish technical content.
• Grow with the company: Take on greater technical, client and leadership responsibility as the Applied AI capability and engineering organisation grows.
• A sustainable working environment: Hybrid working, generous leave, enhanced family leave and flexibility support exceptional work without requiring people to sacrifice everything else.

The important details

• Salary - £65,000–£80,000 depending on experience
• Equity - Equity options - a genuine stake in Fuzzy Labs
• Office - Modern vibrant Central Manchester office with gym on site.
• Location - Manchester
• Working pattern - Manchester Hybrid - 3 days per week in the office
• UK residency - Five or more years' UK residence to ensure Security Clearance (SC) requirements are met.
• Holiday - 25 days, rising to 30 with each year of service
• Development - £500 annual development budget + AI assistant(s) of your choice
• Extras - Healthcare cash plan, enhanced family leave including maternity, paternity and adoption leave, Cycle to Work, volunteering time and company socials

Location

Manchester Hybrid (3 days a week on-site)

We work together from our central Manchester office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Tuesday and Friday normally remote.

We believe regular time together helps us make decisions faster, learn from one another and build the strong working relationships needed for high-quality client delivery.

Some projects also involve occasional travel to customer sites across the UK.

Security clearance

Finally, due to the sensitive nature of some projects, you will be required to undergo UK government security clearance after you start (at SC level - see this link for more information). This will include a credit check and criminal records check. As a result, we’re only able to consider candidates who have been resident in the UK for 5 or more years.

The role

We're looking for strong software engineers who want to apply their engineering experience to the rapidly evolving world of Applied AI.

You don't need to have spent your career in machine learning or have “AI Engineer” in your current job title.

You might be a backend, platform, full-stack or distributed-systems engineer who has spent several years building reliable production software and is now increasingly experimenting with LLMs, agents and AI-assisted development.

What matters is that you're an excellent engineer, you're excited about AI, and you learn quickly.

You'll join client-facing engineering teams building real Applied AI systems. Initially, your greatest contribution may be bringing strong software engineering practices to AI-shaped problems from architecture, APIs, services, data flows, testing, cloud infrastructure, observability and reliability, while developing deeper Applied AI expertise alongside experienced engineers.

Over time, we expect the boundary between AI Software Engineer and Applied AI Engineer to become increasingly blurred.

What you'll do

• Design and build reliable production software around AI capabilities.
• Turn prototypes and experiments into maintainable production systems.
• Build APIs, services, integrations, data pipelines and user-facing capabilities where required.
• Work with LLMs, model APIs, RAG, embeddings, structured outputs, agents and tool use.
• Develop evaluation and testing approaches for systems whose behaviour isn't always deterministic.
• Deploy and operate systems using modern cloud, container and infrastructure practices.
• Work directly with customers to understand problems and turn ambiguous requirements into working software.
• Bring strong software engineering practices into multidisciplinary Applied AI teams.
• Use modern AI-assisted engineering tools effectively while maintaining high standards of engineering judgement.
• Learn rapidly from Applied AI Engineers, client projects and Fuzzy Labs R&D.
• Contribute your existing engineering expertise back into the wider team.

What we're looking for — strong foundations

• Strong experience building and operating production software.
• Strong programming skills, with excellent Python knowledge as a core requirement. Experience with additional languages such as TypeScript, Java, Go or C# is highly valued.
• Strong understanding of software design, APIs, testing, debugging and maintainable code.
• Experience with cloud platforms and modern software delivery practices.
• Experience with modern CI/CD build pipelines, tooling and practices.
• Experience taking software from development through to production.
• An insatiable appetite for solving complex problems and learning new skills.

Applied AI

• We don't expect you to already be an AI specialist. Evidence of active development in this direction might include:
• Any applications of large language models (LLMs) including RAG or semantic search, agentic systems and structure tool use, and integrations into wider systems.
• Any experience of using model evaluation and monitoring for non-deterministic systems at scale or as hobby projects.
• Personal experimentation or side projects within the AI/LLM/ML domain.
• Any Open Source AI projects, side projects and experimentation.
• Keeping up to date with latest and greatest in AI frontier development, not specifically the finer details but being able to understand the direction of travel and where the space is moving towards.

Commercial AI experience is useful, but isn't required. Curiosity, evidence of learning and strong engineering foundations matter more.

We’ve built a great culture at Fuzzy Labs and how you work is as important as what you do, here’s some of the ways we see our values lived in this role:

• Loving what we do: You’ll love telling stories as a vehicle for generating tangible marketing results!
• Just trying it: Experimenting is in our nature, we aren’t afraid of trying something new or left field. Is there a new channel we should try? Don’t follow the norm, do something different in terms of tone and style.
• Being greater than the sum of parts: Marketing isn't a solo game, you’ll be part of a close knit team of technologists and commercial minds. Our team wants to contribute across the whole business and you should too. We’re in it together.
• Positive impact: We chose to build a business that will use AI for the benefit of society, you’ll be at the forefront of ensuring we find customers and use cases that cement and enhance this belief and deliver a positive impact in the world.

Interested?

The Fuzzy Labs team are experts on MLOps and in this publication we're going to tell you WTF it is, and why it is essential for building AI applications

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