Principal Engineer - Technical Lead (Gen AI and MACH Architecture)

At AKQA, we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design and build adaptive digital products, services and experiences that capture the imagination and deliver impressive returns for our clients. We are looking for a senior, architecture-led Principal Engineer to join our London Tech team as a Technical Lead. This is a hands-on engineering role, not a strategy-only or evangelism position. You will spend the majority of your time designing, building and shipping enterprise-grade systems, with roughly 65 to 70% hands-on delivery and 30 to 35% technical leadership, architecture and team guidance. You will lead the technical direction of complex client programmes across MACH architectures and production Generative AI; spanning Design to Code workflows, solution design and API contracts through to cloud infrastructure, deployment and ongoing operation. You will own architecture decisions, write and review production code, and mentor engineers, while remaining accountable for what ships, not just what is proposed.

Responsibilities

Design, build and ship enterprise-grade systems with roughly 65 to 70% hands-on delivery and 30 to 35% technical leadership, architecture and team guidance; Lead the technical direction of complex client programmes across MACH architectures and production Generative AI, spanning Design to Code workflows, solution design and API contracts through to cloud infrastructure, deployment and ongoing operation; Own architecture decisions, write and review production code, and mentor engineers, while remaining accountable for what ships; Work closely with Technical Managers, cross-discipline teams and on-shore, off-shore and hybrid engineering squads; Articulate ideas to colleagues effectively, take on board the ideas of others and remain solutions focused; Occasionally support pre-sales scoping or technical pitches; Constantly look to improve client offerings

Requirements

Minimum three years' experience with Generative AI; Proven experience shipping at least one AI solution to production in an enterprise context; AI architecture for experience platforms, including RAG, GraphRAG, agent orchestration and proximity/relevance evaluation; Hands-on implementation with Vercel AI SDK, Vercel AI Cloud and agentic cloud patterns; AI content and data engineering, including ingestion, cleansing, transformation, embedding, indexing and retrieval pipeline design; Integration across cloud AI services such as GCP + Vertex AI, Vercel AI Cloud, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI within a broader MACH and API-led landscape; GEO and LLM optimisation; Model fine-tuning for production use cases; AI cost-value analysis, observability, governance, testing and evaluation frameworks; Practical application of Generative AI to marketing and experience challenges; Advanced Design Systems thinking and Design to Code workflow; Applying Gen AI in the design-to-application process; Minimum eight years' experience designing and delivering MACH-based enterprise platforms; Deep hands-on experience with GCP and Vertex AI, Vercel AI cloud, or equivalent alternatives on AWS and Azure; RESTful and GraphQL API design, contract-first design, versioning, gateway patterns; Distributed systems and event-driven architecture; Advanced server-side development with Python recommended; Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD; Cloud and edge hosting; Front-end integration literacy with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Next.js + React; CMS, DXPs, MarTech and SaaS integration; Workflow and delivery tooling; Automation, quality assurance and non-functional requirements; Must be from a senior engineering, platform or architecture background; Builder-first mindset; Continuous-improvement approach; Professional written and verbal communication

Nice to have

Figma; Cursor; Claude; Vercel v0; Python; additional languages; SwiftUI; Kotlin; Flutter; React Native