Senior Applied AI Engineer

Scale's Global Public Sector team uses AI to address critical challenges facing the public sector worldwide. As a Senior Applied AI Engineer, you will own the AI behaviour of production systems that clients depend on.

Responsibilities

• Own the AI layer of production systems for public sector clients, including agents, model integration, and backend services.
• Build production agents from established architectural patterns with reliable tool calling, guardrails, and observability.
• Select and adapt evaluation methods, designing new evaluations for client-specific risks where needed.
• Apply techniques such as context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, model adaptation, or inference optimisation.
• Investigate regressions, lead root-cause analysis, and implement preventative changes.
• Lead project planning and manage client expectations on scope, risk, and delivery.
• Codify recurring client work into reusable tooling, evaluation components, or guidance.
• Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and delegated ownership.

Requirements

• Backend engineering experience with a track record of taking AI/ML systems into production.
• Experience owning the AI behaviour of a production system end-to-end.
• Experience designing evaluations that tie model behaviour to real-world outcomes.
• Experience leading root-cause analysis on a production AI or ML system.
• Comfort working directly with clients, explaining model behaviour and trade-offs.
• Experience handling regulated or sensitive data and designing for auditability.