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From the employer's careers site First seen 27 Oct 2026

Principal Forward Deployed Data Scientist

Barclays senior full-time

Salary

$235,000 - $285,000 per year

Apply on Barclays

Description

This is a senior, hands-on technical leadership role for a data scientist who has built real, production AI applications for internal teams and customers and knows what it takes to take an idea all the way from prototype to production within a regulated environment.

You will sit at the intersection of our business, our users, and the bleeding edge of AI. You won't be handed a spec; you'll work directly with stakeholders to understand the problem, choose the right approach for it, build the solution, deploy it, and stay with it as it grows.

Responsibilities

  • Take ideas from prototype to production. Start from a rough concept or business problem, prove it quickly with a prototype, then do the hard engineering to turn it into a reliable, scalable, production-grade system people can depend on , and know what each stage demands.
  • Build agentic AI, end to end. Design, implement, deploy, and evolve autonomous and tool-using AI systems , agents that reason, plan, call tools, and act on the user's behalf , for both internal and customer-facing use, owning the full lifecycle and the outcome.
  • Design agentic architectures. Build agent-orchestration systems: single and multi-agent setups, tool and function calling, Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agent-to-agent coordination, planning and reasoning loops, memory, identity and access for agents, and the control and safety mechanisms that keep autonomous behaviour trustworthy.
  • Match the solution to the problem. No one-size-fits-all. You assess each problem on its own terms and choose the right approach , a different model, agent pattern, or architecture for a different need , rather than forcing everything through a single template.
  • Live on the bleeding edge. Actively track new models, agentic frameworks, techniques, and tooling as they emerge; prototype quickly, form a view, and bring the ones that matter into production with sound judgement about what's ready and what's hype.
  • Deliver, dependably. Ship software to production on time and to a high standard, navigating the controls, governance, and compliance expectations of a regulated environment.
  • Embed with the business. Work shoulder-to-shoulder with stakeholders, shape the roadmap, and translate business goals into working AI capability.
  • Set the standard. Define how agentic AI is built here , quality, evaluation, observability, and responsible-AI practices that others follow , and be the trusted technical authority for AI delivery across the organisation.

Essential Requirements

  • Building AI/LLM applications in production , real systems people rely on, whether internal or customer-facing, not prototypes or demos.
  • Taking ideas from prototype to production , a proven ability to move from a fast proof of concept to a hardened, scalable, maintainable production system, and the judgement to know what changes between the two.
  • A proven track record of delivering software to production in a regulated environment , real, shipped systems with lasting impact, delivered within governance, risk, compliance, and audit controls (e.g. financial services or similar) without losing delivery pace.
  • Hands-on experience with agentic AI , building systems where models reason, plan, call tools, and take actions, including multi-agent and agent-to-agent (A2A) coordination, tool and data integration via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and the control and safety mechanisms that keep autonomous behaviour trustworthy.
  • Identity and access for AI , how agents authenticate, act on behalf of users with delegated authority, and operate under non-human/service identities, with the authentication, authorisation, and auditability a regulated environment demands.
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals , reliable, observable, testable, maintainable systems.
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder skills , fluent moving between a business conversation and a technical design, and comfortable working directly with non-technical stakeholders.
  • A forward-deployed mindset , comfortable with ambiguity, close to the business and the user, biased toward shipping and iterating.

Benefits

  • Minimum Salary: $235,000
  • Maximum Salary: $285,000

Skills

Nice to have

  • retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
  • evaluation (evals)
  • guardrails and safety
  • prompt and context design
  • memory
  • leading architecture
Apply on Barclays