Lead AI Consultant

Softwire is looking for a Lead AI Consultant to help our clients turn the current wave of AI capability (especially LLMs) into real, valuable, maintainable software.

About the Position

Softwire is a leading UK technology and strategy consultancy. From enterprise to government, we help visionary organisations turn strategic ambitions into results at scale. Our practices cover AI transformation, data platforms, systems engineering, advanced CX, and experience design.

We focus on creating a great culture and working environment and we are looking for people who share our core beliefs about what makes a great place to work:

• That if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.
• That work should be fulfilling but can also be fun.
• That kindness matters and should be extended to employees and clients alike.
• That by being trusting and trustworthy as an organisation and as individuals we can dispense with tedious bureaucracy and rules.

When you work with Softwire, you’re not only becoming part of a team with in-depth technical skills and delivery expertise – you’ll be working in a high-trust environment alongside skilled, kind, fun people who are passionate about creating amazing services and experiences that solve real problems.

Responsibilities

As a Lead AI Consultant, you’ll operate as a senior technical leader on client work, helping teams move from “AI curiosity” to working, production-grade solutions.

• Work hands-on within multidisciplinary teams to design and deliver AI-enabled software
• Help clients make the right calls on where AI adds value (and where it doesn’t)
• Use, advise on, and develop AI-related features such as:
  • Intelligent search / retrieval experiences and RAG
  • Summarisation and document comprehension at scale
  • Context management
  • AI agents, MCP servers, and best-practice configuration of, for example, AGENTS.md
  • Advanced use of tools such as Claude Code and Codex
  • Assistants and copilots embedded into workflows
  • Classification, extraction, and decision support tooling
  • Retraining and fine-tuning models
  • Trade-offs between different models (including open models)
  • Calculation / forecasting of token usage
  • Vector databases
  • Well-formed opinions on and experience of AI-enhanced SDLCs
• Set teams up for sustainable success through:
  • Strong engineering practices (testing, CI/CD, observability, quality)
  • Clear system boundaries and maintainable architecture
  • Safe and secure deployment patterns for AI components at scale
  • AI performance, accuracy, and reliability monitoring through evals
• Coach and upskill client engineers on pragmatic, safe adoption of AI tools and techniques
• Keeping yourself and your team up-to-date on the latest AI techniques and technology
• Contribute to Softwire’s internal capability building: patterns, accelerators, reusable approaches, and a strong culture of “learning by building”

Requirements

• Senior engineering capability: You have significant experience building and shipping production software, and you’re confident working across architecture, implementation, deployment, and operational support. You care about maintainability and long-term ownership as much as delivery speed.
• Technical leadership and delivery ownership: You can lead technical direction on a project: choosing appropriate patterns, establishing standards, helping teams make trade-offs, and ensuring work is built in a way that scales. You take responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks.
• Practical experience applying AI in real teams: You’re enthusiastic about bringing AI into development teams in ways that genuinely stick, including both:
  • AI tooling to support development (e.g. coding assistants, test generation, refactoring support, documentation acceleration, internal workflows)
  • Building products that incorporate AI/LLM features (e.g. assistants/coplots, summarisation, document understanding, semantic search/RAG, extraction, classification, decision support, workflow automation)
• Strong engineering fundamentals: You build with the discipline needed to keep software reliable and maintainable, including:
  • automated testing strategies (unit/integration/e2e where appropriate)
  • good CI/CD hygiene and code review practices
  • clean boundaries and readable, extensible code
  • observability and operational readiness (logging, monitoring, failure modes)
• Confidence working with AI uncertainty and risk: You understand that AI systems behave differently to deterministic software, and you build with that reality in mind - designing for predictable behaviour, graceful degradation, and appropriate safeguards. You’re able to explain limitations clearly and manage risk responsibly.

We Offer

• Base salary: £69,000 - £89,100
• Profit share: £5,750 - £15,250
• Pension: Additional 5% of salary

Additional benefits

• 25 days annual leave (with the option to buy 10 and sell 5)
• 3.5 days additional days off for company-wide morale activities
• AIG income protection
• Travel card loan scheme
• Zero emission car scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Enhanced maternity/paternity pay
• Time off for charitable activities
• Sabbatical available on request
• Payroll charity donations
• Headspace plus
• Free annual eye test
• Long service awards
• Flexible working options and patterns

About the Company

Softwire is a leading UK technology and strategy consultancy. From enterprise to government, we help visionary organisations turn strategic ambitions into results at scale. Our practices cover AI transformation, data platforms, systems engineering, advanced CX, and experience design.

We focus on creating a great culture and working environment and we are looking for people who share our core beliefs about what makes a great place to work:

• That if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.
• That work should be fulfilling but can also be fun.
• That kindness matters and should be extended to employees and clients alike.
• That by being trusting and trustworthy as an organisation and as individuals we can dispense with tedious bureaucracy and rules.

When you work with Softwire, you’re not only becoming part of a team with in-depth technical skills and delivery expertise – you’ll be working in a high-trust environment alongside skilled, kind, fun people who are passionate about creating amazing services and experiences that solve real problems.