Product Engineer, Applied AI

Join White & Case's Applied AI team to turn promising, rapidly developed prototypes into secure, reliable products that can be used and supported across the Firm. You will work directly with the Associate Director, Applied AI, to assess existing applications, decide what should be retained, refactored or rebuilt, and take ownership of the engineering needed to move them into production. This includes integration, security, testing, deployment, monitoring and early live support, working closely with Technology and security colleagues. Our backend centres on Python, using FastAPI and FastMCP. Django is likely to be used for the first project, but the framework may vary for later projects depending on their needs. Many applications will be accessed through AI assistants via the Firm's MCP gateway, making backend services, data modelling and secure integration central to the role. We need a practical product engineer who can bring structure to incomplete or experimental code, make sensible trade-offs and get useful software safely into users' hands. Over time, there will also be opportunities to shape and build new prototypes.

Responsibilities

Assess prototypes for production readiness, including architecture, code quality, dependencies, data handling, security, scalability, supportability and user value; Recommend whether each prototype should be hardened, refactored, rebuilt or stopped, and agree a practical route to production; Build Python services, relational data models, APIs and background processing; add lightweight frontend interfaces where useful; Develop MCP integrations through the Firm's gateway, handling authentication, permissions and token exchange with downstream applications; Work with Technology on approved cloud deployments and connections to on-premises systems, resolving infrastructure and integration dependencies; Follow the Firm's central SDLC and security policies; implement testing, access controls, audit logging and secure secrets handling; Take production applications through deployment, controlled release and early live use, then establish clear ownership, support procedures, service expectations and handover arrangements with the relevant Technology teams; Define and run evaluations for AI-enabled behaviour, including representative test cases, quality thresholds, regression testing and human review where appropriate; Monitor failures, latency, usage and consumption costs in production, and use the results to improve applications and contribute reusable engineering patterns

Requirements

Professional software engineering experience that includes taking incomplete, experimental or early-stage applications into production and maintaining them afterwards; Experience working in an autonomous, fast-moving environment where you contributed across development, integration, deployment and live operation; Strong Python skills and experience with FastAPI or comparable Python frameworks; Strong SQL and relational database skills, plus experience designing and integrating APIs; Practical understanding of authentication and authorisation, including OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect; Experience with automated testing, Git, CI/CD, cloud deployment and production troubleshooting; Clear communication, pragmatic product and engineering judgement, and the ability to bring structure to unfamiliar or incomplete systems; Comfortable making progress with limited documentation, surfacing risks early and working with security, infrastructure and product specialists to resolve them

Nice to have

Experience with FastMCP, Azure, Entra ID, API gateways, delegated access or token exchange; Cloud-to-on-premises integration experience; LLM applications experience; Straightforward JavaScript/TypeScript interface skills

Benefits

Private medical insurance; Pension plan with matched employer contribution up to 7.5%; Yearly wellbeing fund; Income protection; Life insurance; Critical Illness insurance; Private GP services; Travel insurance; Dental coverage; Cycle to work; Holiday purchase (available during annual enrolment)