Job Title: AI Engineer Salary: £60,000 - £80,000 DOE Location: Greater Manchester, United Kingdom Type: Permanent, Full-Time
About the Business
A well-established, market-leading UK manufacturer with over 50 years of trading history, supplying businesses across the UK and Europe. The business is now beginning its AI journey in earnest and this is the first dedicated AI hire, a genuine opportunity to shape how AI is adopted from day one.
The Role
This is a greenfield position. You'll be joining alongside an initial contract consultant brought in for discovery and scoping and will transition into the primary technical owner responsible for building and deploying AI solutions across the business. The focus is on agentic AI, building autonomous systems that can reason and act, not just surface data.
Before meaningful AI can be built, the business needs its data structured and cleaned. This role sits at that intersection part data engineer; part AI builder and we're looking for someone comfortable with both.
What You'll Be Doing
- Auditing existing data, identifying gaps and blockers to AI readiness
- Cleaning, transforming and structuring data across operational systems
- Designing and building agentic AI systems tailored to real business use cases
- Integrating LLM-based solutions into existing workflows and processes
- Working directly with senior leadership to prioritise use cases and define the technical roadmap
- Acting as the internal AI subject matter expert as the function grows
What We're Looking For
- A strong data engineering background comfortable working with messy, real-world data
- Hands-on experience building AI/ML systems in production environments
- Practical knowledge of agentic AI frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen or similar
- Proficiency in Python and relevant libraries
- Experience integrating LLMs via API (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
- Someone who can work in ambiguity and define the path rather than follow one
- Strong communication skills, you'll be translating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders regularly
Desirable but not essential: experience in a manufacturing or industrial setting, knowledge of RAG architectures, familiarity with cloud platforms, prior experience as a first or early AI hire.
What's on Offer
- £60,000 - £80,000 depending on experience
- A first-of-its-kind role with real ownership and influence
- Direct access to senior leadership
- A stable, profitable business with genuine appetite to invest in this area
- The opportunity to build something from scratch in a business with real operational complexity
