INTRODUCTION
This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced engineer who thrives on working at the frontier of AI, solving open-ended problems, and building new capabilities from the ground up. It suits someone technically sharp, well organised and commercially minded, with a positive, can-do attitude and a collaborative mindset.
HGEM is the authority in Guest Experience Management (GEM), empowering hospitality brands to grow through guest insights. We build and operate a suite of data-driven products that help our clients understand, measure, and improve every guest interaction.
AI agents can design, build, and iterate on software autonomously. This role exists to harness that capability and industrialise it inside HGEM - ensuring our product development moves faster, our architecture stays coherent, and our engineering team is at the frontier of what is now possible.
The Senior AI Engineer will architect and operate the orchestration layer through which AI agents build our product. They will write the majority of code using AI tools, design the pipelines and guardrails that make agentic development safe and repeatable, and lead the integration of LLM-powered features into HGEM platforms. This role reports to the Chief Technical Officer.
We offer a supportive, high-performance culture where you can genuinely make an impact as part of a friendly team. For team cohesion purposes, you should be based within about 30 miles of Bath, where our vibrant office is based (although we support hybrid working).
CORE RESPONSIBILITIES
Agentic engineering
- Architect and maintain the orchestration layer that coordinates AI agents to design, write, test, and deploy production code
- Define guardrails, evaluation frameworks, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints that make agentic development safe and auditable
- Write the majority of production code using AI coding tools, treating AI as a first-class collaborator rather than an autocomplete aid
- Continuously evaluate new agent frameworks, models, and tooling and recommend adoption where there is clear product or velocity benefit
LLM integration & AI features
- Design and build LLM-powered features within the HGEM platform, including natural language interfaces, intelligent summarisation, and automated insight generation
- Own the prompt engineering, RAG pipeline design, and retrieval architecture underpinning AI features
- Integrate with external model providers and evaluate when to use third-party APIs versus fine-tuned or self-hosted models
- Implement robust evaluation pipelines to measure output quality, latency, and cost across AI features
Data & ML foundations
- Design and maintain embedding pipelines, vector stores, and semantic search capabilities that power AI features
- Collaborate with the data team on ML model training and fine-tuning where HGEM's proprietary data provides a competitive advantage
- Ensure AI systems meet data governance, privacy, and security standards relevant to HGEM's hospitality clients
Engineering standards
- Produce clean, well-tested, maintainable code in accordance with HGEM's coding standards - whether authored directly or via AI tools
- Participate in code review and architecture discussions.
- Contribute to technical documentation, specifications, and internal knowledge sharing on AI-era engineering practices
- Identify and manage risks when AI-generated changes could affect other areas of the system
Leadership & influence
- Act as an internal authority on AI engineering practice - helping the wider team understand how to work effectively alongside AI agents
- Consult with the CTO and leadership team to shape HGEM's AI product strategy and technology choices
- Perform research and development activities that lead to innovations in product capability, development efficiency, and platform performance
SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Essential
- Hands-on experience building production systems with LLMs, RAG architectures and tool use.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals in one or more of: C#, Python, TypeScript / JavaScript
- Experience integrating with LLM provider APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, or equivalent)
- Working knowledge of embedding models, vector databases, and semantic search
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure on Azure or equivalent (deployment, storage, compute, managed AI services)
- Experience with source control (Git), CI/CD pipelines, and test-driven development
- Ability to evaluate and benchmark AI model output quality, cost, and latency
Desirable
- Agent orchestration (OpenClaw/Hermes)
- Knowledge of data privacy regulations and their implications for AI systems handling customer data
PERSONAL QUALITIES
- Genuinely excited by the current pace of AI development and motivated to stay at the frontier
- Comfortable with ambiguity - able to move quickly and make pragmatic decisions where the "right answer" is still emerging
- Clear, logical thinking with an instinct for system design and second-order effects
- High standards for engineering quality, even when code is AI-generated
- Strong communicator who can explain AI concepts clearly to non-technical colleagues and leadership
- Collaborative team member who improves those around them — sharing knowledge, reviewing work thoughtfully, and elevating team practice
- Commercially aware — understands how AI investment translates to product value for HGEM's clients
If this sounds like you, we'd love to see your CV!
Job Types: Full-time, Permanent
Pay: £65,000.00-£70,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Additional leave
- Casual dress
- Company events
- Company pension
- Cycle to work scheme
- Gym membership
- Profit sharing
- Work from home
Application question(s):
- Please advise when you may be available for an initial interview (allow 45 minutes via Teams).
- What attracted you to this role and why do you feel you may be a good fit?
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Bath BA1 1ER
