Developer (AI Platforms - AI Journeys & Agentic Engineering)

Reporting into the Chief Technical Officer, we’re looking for an experienced Senior Developer to build our AI discovery platform, deliver Connex AI journeys for our customers and lead the adoption of agentic AI across our development teams.

We’re building ASK, an AI-powered customer discovery platform. A conversational assistant interviews a customer about their business, systems and pain points, costs each problem, ranks the opportunities into the customer’s own portal and matches them to AI “journeys” we deliver - virtual receptionist, appointment booking, cash collection, automated reporting, or bespoke consultancy. It is multi-tenant, runs on Azure in the UK and is live in UAT today, with Chess as its first customer. As Senior Developer you will own that platform and take it from a founder-built prototype to a product customers pay for.

This is a hands-on technical role. You will ship code most days: extending the ASK platform, building and integrating the Connex journeys customers switch on, and creating the tooling and working practices that make agentic AI a normal part of how our development teams deliver. You will work closely with the AI Lab, our AI consultants, Sales and Pre-Sales, and with customers during scoping, testing and go-live., * Building and owning the ASK platform end to end - Node/TypeScript on Azure Container Apps, PostgreSQL with row-level security per tenant, multiple identity providers per tenant, a pluggable LLM layer and usage billing - and taking it to production: o Pen-test remediation, production environment and sizing, custom hostname, outbound email and Microsoft 365 organisation import o Journey activation against Simply AI, Copilot agents and Connex, and integration with Nexus, our API layer for retrieving customer data during a live journey o Roadmap features: deep-dive question packs, connectors (Jira, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow, webhooks), the MCP endpoint, reporting and AI risk register modules

• Keeping the platform defensible: tenant isolation, audit trail, UK data residency, secrets in Key Vault and tests that run on every push.
• Designing, building and deploying agentic AI journeys on Connex for Chess customers - voice and chat automations such as virtual receptionist, appointment booking, cash collection calls and reporting - from discovery record through to live service.
• Building the integrations a journey needs to identify the caller, pull account status, book the slot and write back to the customer’s CRM, finance or ticketing system, working directly with REST APIs, webhooks and data payloads.
• Making journeys reusable - built once, with customer-specific data injected at runtime - and keeping the engine swappable so a journey can move between Connex, Simply AI and Copilot without a rebuild.
• Owning the technical side of our internal Connex deployment, including PCI scope, SSO, mobile app governance and pen-test findings.
• Working with our AI consultants, Sales and Pre-Sales to scope bespoke journeys and turn recurring requirements into repeatable catalogue items.
• Setting the working practices for AI-assisted and agentic development across our development teams - which tools we use (Claude Code, Copilot and others), what gets reviewed and how, and where the guardrails sit - in line with our agentic AI and code-generation risk treatment plans.
• Coaching engineers from occasional AI use to running agents as a normal part of their work, moving the team up our AI maturity model (Author * Editor * Director * Orchestrator).
• Building the internal tooling that makes this stick: MCP connectors to our systems, shared prompts and skills, CI checks and evaluation of new tools as they arrive.
• Measuring and reporting the effect on throughput, quality and adoption - plainly, including where it is not working.
• Ensuring code, integrations, journeys and decision logic are clearly documented and maintainable so nothing depends on a single person.

• Proven experience as a senior full-stack engineer with strong TypeScript/Node and SQL (PostgreSQL preferred), and a track record of shipping and running production web applications.
• Hands-on Azure experience: Container Apps or AKS, Key Vault, managed identity, Bicep or Terraform, and GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps pipelines.
• Identity and multi-tenancy: OIDC/OAuth2, Entra ID, session and token handling, and a working understanding of tenant isolation and why it cannot be retrofitted.
• Daily, fluent use of agentic AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor or Copilot agent mode, with the judgement to know when their output is wrong.
• Experience integrating LLM APIs (Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, Anthropic or similar) into products: prompt design, structured output, validation, fallbacks and cost control.
• Experience working with REST APIs, webhooks and data payloads to automate workflows between systems, including CRM, ticketing, finance or telephony platforms.
• Security-minded by habit: input validation, SSRF and injection awareness, secrets handling, and comfortable working through pen-test findings.
• Experience with conversational or voice AI platforms - Connex, Simply AI, PolyAI, Copilot Studio or similar - and contact centre integration (Webex, Zoom) is desirable.
• Experience building or consuming MCP servers, or API gateway / integration platform experience, is desirable.
• Experience in a managed service provider, telecoms or B2B SaaS environment, with exposure to PCI DSS or ISO 27001, is desirable.
• Experience coaching or leading engineers through a change in working practice.
• Clear and confident communication skills, able to explain a technical trade-off to a sales director or a board and to write documentation other people actually use.
• Ability to manage several concurrent workstreams - platform, customer journeys and team practice - balancing priorities and keeping stakeholders informed.
• Ability to establish, maintain and manage strong working relationships with customers, colleagues, suppliers and partners.

• Private healthcare (free after 1 year)
• Eye tests, flu jabs, and on-site health checks

• Mental health support from trained First Aiders A Wellbeing Day after 1 year

• Hybrid working support with a home office allowance
• 20 days holiday (rising to 24 with service) plus bank holidays
• Buy or sell up to 5 holidays twice a year
• Perkbox discounts on shopping, travel, fitness, and more
• Points-based rewards from year 2
• Charity donation matching (up to £100)
• Recognition platform to celebrate your wins
• EE SIM offers for you and your family
• £1000 referral bonus
• Learn 2 Earn scheme to boost your salary
• Team socials and celebrations
• Bespoke onboarding and leadership training
• Dedicated Culture Team to support you, A standard week is 37½ Monday to Friday Flexible, hybrid position with a home-first working policy. Allowing you to enjoy the flexibility of working from home whilst also having the option to work from one of our many local hubs spread throughout the UK. Ad-hoc travel to offices within the group and other locations may be required on occasion.

Chess is one of the UK’s leading independent and trusted technology service providers, employing over 280 skilled people across the UK, supporting over 18,000 UK businesses.

Diversity, equality, and inclusion is at the heart of our Chess culture, and we are passionate about our One Team spirit.

We’re extremely proud that our people voted us No.1 in ‘The 100 Best Companies to Work for’ list 2018, and we continue to celebrate more than 17 years in the top 100.

Our continued focus on growth creates opportunity for everyone to progress their career, to develop knowledge and skills, to gain reward and recognition and to maximise their potential. The growth and success of our people ensures the growth and success of our business.