AI Lead Engineer

Job Summary

•    As an AI Application Engineer, you’ll be responsible for integrating, fine-tuning, and operationalizing large language models and other AI components into production-grade software systems. This role focuses on post-training workflows—such as fine-tuning, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector database integration, and model deployment—rather than foundational model development.
•    You’ll work closely with backend engineers, product teams, and data teams to build intelligent apps that are fast, accurate, consistent and production ready.

Key Responsibilities

Software Delivery 
•    Integrate LLMs and other AI components into web and backend applications.
•    Fine-tune open models using techniques like LoRA, QLoRA, or supervised fine-tuning.
•    Build RAG pipelines using vector databases.
•    Design and optimize prompts for various tasks (prompt chaining, templating, few-shot setups).
•    Package and deploy models for inference 
•    Evaluate and monitor AI model performance in live environments.
•    Ensure scalable, secure, and compliant use of AI systems in production.
•    Stay informed on LLM tooling ecosystems (LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI APIs, Hugging Face, Spring AI etc.)

Strategy
•    Awareness and understanding of the Group’s business strategy and model appropriate to the role.

Business
•    Awareness and understanding of Trade Finance, the wider business, economic, and market environment in which the Group operates.

Processes
•    Ensure adherence to Systems Development Framework and control processes.
•    Ensure delivery of all software artefacts

People & Talent
•    Lead through example and build the appropriate culture and values.  Set appropriate tone and expectations from their team and work in collaboration with risk and control partners.
•    Ensure the provision of ongoing training and development of people and ensure that holders of all critical functions are suitably skilled and qualified for their roles ensuring that they have effective supervision in place to mitigate any risks.
•    Employ, engage, and retain high quality people, with succession planning for critical roles.
•    Responsibility to review team structure/capacity plans.
•    Set and monitor job descriptions and objectives for direct reports and provide feedback and rewards in line with their performance against those responsibilities and objectives.

Risk Management
•    Awareness and understanding of the Bank’s risk management processes and practices.

Governance
•    Awareness and understanding of the Bank’s governance frameworks applicable to Trade Finance and practices that support them.

Regulatory & Business Conduct
•    Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct. 
•    Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.
•    Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.
Key stakeholders
•    CIB Trade ITO Team

Skills and Experience

•    Micro-services development using Python
•    Java, Spring, Spring Cloud
•    Virtualization, Containerisation, and Orchestration (AWS, Docker, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes)
•    Continuous Integration/Deployment (CI/CD) and Automation (Jenkins, Ansible)
•    Project Management
•    Prompt Engineering strategies and LLM handling
•    RAG, Embeddings, Vector DB, MCP experience
•    Confluence/Azure DevOps or Git, CI / CD (Maven, Git, Jenkins), Eclipse or Intelij IDEA
•    Software Development

Qualifications

Required Qualifications
•    Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
•    2+ years of experience building AI-augmented applications or services.
•    Proficient in Python and familiar with frameworks like LangChain, Transformers, or Hugging Face datasets.
•    Understanding of vector embeddings and experience with vector search tools.
•    Strong grasp of model deployment workflows (e.g., Docker, REST APIs, cloud services like AWS/Microsoft Azure).
•    Familiarity with prompt engineering strategies and LLM behavior tuning.
•    Experience integrating with APIs from OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source models like Mistral or LLaMA.
 Preferred Qualifications
•    Experience fine-tuning models using PEFT methods (LoRA/QLoRA).
•    Familiarity with LLMOps, observability, and model evaluation 
•    Exposure to security, privacy, and responsible AI practices.
•    Prior experience building chatbots, copilots, document analyzers, or other AI apps.
•    Contributions to open-source AI tools or GenAI workflows.

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.