Principal AI Platform Engineer
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
This is a principal-level individual contributor role within Platform Engineering, responsible for defining and delivering the AI platform that underpins Instem's adoption of AI across both the enterprise and our product portfolio.
You will build the shared capabilities, integration patterns, and guardrails that enable teams to safely and effectively leverage AI - ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, observable, and aligned with regulatory expectations.
This role goes beyond platform build. You will enable adoption at scale: empowering teams to use AI confidently, embedding advanced capabilities into products, and ensuring consistent, production-grade approaches across the organisation.
You will take a vendor-agnostic approach, selecting models and platforms based on use case, cost, performance, and governance - balancing rapid innovation with long-term sustainability and control.
What are you responsible for?
AI Platform & Integration
- Define and build reusable AI platform capabilities on Azure
- Establish standard patterns for RAG, agents, tool use, and model lifecycle management
- Design secure integration patterns enabling AI to interact with enterprise systems, products, and external tools
Adoption & Enablement
- Enable teams across engineering, product, and corporate functions to safely adopt AI
- Provide reusable SDKs, templates, and reference architectures to accelerate delivery
- Drive practical adoption of AI tools (e.g. Microsoft 365 Copilot, agents, workflows) with measurable impact
Product AI
- Partner with product teams to embed advanced, production-grade AI capabilities into customer-facing solutions
- Define patterns for evaluation, fallback, human oversight, and auditability
- Ensure AI enhances product differentiation while remaining supportable and compliant
Platform as a Product
- Treat the AI platform as a product, with clear consumers, adoption metrics, and continuous improvement
- Optimise for usability, performance, and cost efficiency
Security, Governance & Resilience
- Define safe AI usage patterns across data, prompts, models, and outputs
- Ensure systems are resilient, observable, and aligned with regulatory and security requirements
- Embed governance into delivery, not just process
Leadership & Influence
- Influence architecture, product, and engineering teams as a senior individual contributor
- Help shape the organisation's AI operating model and standards
- Mentor engineers and raise the bar for AI engineering across the organisation
Requirements
- Strong experience in platform, cloud, or software engineering, delivering production-grade systems at scale
- Deep hands-on experience with modern AI systems, including LLMs, RAG, agents, and evaluation approaches
- Proven experience building reusable platforms, services, or developer tooling adopted by multiple teams
- Strong Azure experience, including AI services, identity (Entra), observability, and modern deployment patterns
- Experience designing secure integration patterns across enterprise and product environments
- Proficiency in Python and at least one of C# or TypeScript
- Strong experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Bicep or equivalent) and CI/CD practices
- Experience with observability and performance management, including AI-specific evaluation and monitoring
- Strong understanding of security, identity, and access control in enterprise environments
- Ability to influence without authority, working across multiple teams and disciplines
- Experience working within structured governance frameworks (e.g. architectural review boards, QMS-aligned environments)
Desirable:
- Experience in regulated environments (e.g. life sciences, healthtech, GxP)
- Familiarity with AI governance, data protection, and audit requirements (e.g. GDPR, 21 CFR Part 11)
- Experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot, agents, or enterprise AI workflow integration
- Familiarity with MCP or secure external tool integration patterns
- Knowledge of the Company's Quality Management System and its application to tasks associated with this role
Benefits & conditions
Package: Competitive Salary, Flexible Working, Development & Opportunity (Personal & Technical), Private Medical (Optical & Dental options), Matching Contributory Pension, 25 Days Leave + Public Holidays + Buy and Sell Scheme, Life Insurance, Referral Scheme, Employee Assistance Program, Benefits Hub.
