Applied - AI Engineer

Job Description

Purpose of the role

To design, develop and improve software, utilising various engineering methodologies, that provides business, platform, and technology capabilities for our customers and colleagues.

Accountabilities

• Development and delivery of high-quality software solutions by using industry aligned programming languages, frameworks, and tools. Ensuring that code is scalable, maintainable, and optimized for performance.
• Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define software requirements, devise solution strategies, and ensure seamless integration and alignment with business objectives.
• Collaboration with peers, participate in code reviews, and promote a culture of code quality and knowledge sharing.
• Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations and actively contribute to the organization’s technology communities to foster a culture of technical excellence and growth.
• Adherence to secure coding practices to mitigate vulnerabilities, protect sensitive data, and ensure secure software solutions.
• Implementation of effective unit testing practices to ensure proper code design, readability, and reliability.

Analyst Expectations

• To perform prescribed activities in a timely manner and to a high standard consistently driving continuous improvement.
• Requires in-depth technical knowledge and experience in their assigned area of expertise
• Thorough understanding of the underlying principles and concepts within the area of expertise
• They lead and supervise a team, guiding and supporting professional development, allocating work requirements and coordinating team resources.
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L - Listen and be authentic, E - Energise and inspire, A - Align across the enterprise, D - Develop others.
• OR for an individual contributor, they develop technical expertise in work area, acting as an advisor where appropriate.
• Will have an impact on the work of related teams within the area.
• Partner with other functions and business areas.
• Takes responsibility for end results of a team’s operational processing and activities.
• Escalate breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Take responsibility for embedding new policies/ procedures adopted due to risk mitigation.
• Advise and influence decision making within own area of expertise.
• Take ownership for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work you own or contribute to. Deliver your work and areas of responsibility in line with relevant rules, regulation and codes of conduct.
• Maintain and continually build an understanding of how own sub-function integrates with function, alongside knowledge of the organisations products, services and processes within the function.
• Demonstrate understanding of how areas coordinate and contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the organisation sub-function.
• Make evaluative judgements based on the analysis of factual information, paying attention to detail.
• Resolve problems by identifying and selecting solutions through the application of acquired technical experience and will be guided by precedents.
• Guide and persuade team members and communicate complex / sensitive information.
• Act as contact point for stakeholders outside of the immediate function, while building a network of contacts outside team and external to the organisation.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship - our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset - to Empower, Challenge and Drive - the operating manual for how we behave.

Join Barclays as an Applied - AI Engineer role, where you will build and deliver AI/ML features for our enterprise AI capabilities. Working within an experienced engineering team, you will develop agentic AI solutions, implement LLM-powered applications, and contribute to building secure, scalable AI systems that serve thousands of colleagues across the organisation. This is a hands-on engineering role with significant growth opportunity in GenAI, agentic AI, and applied machine learning. At Barclays, we don't just anticipate the future - we're creating it.

To be successful in this role, you should have below skills:

• Bachelor's degree (or above) in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related discipline

• 3+ years software engineering experience developing applications at scale on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)

• Proficiency in Python (preferred) or Java/Go - with experience building REST APIs, working with async frameworks, and writing clean, testable code

• Experience with GenAI/LLM systems - calling LLM APIs, building prompts, implementing RAG patterns, or working with embedding models

• Working experience with at least one agentic AI framework (Strands, LangGraph, or Google ADK) and familiarity with MCP and A2A protocols

• Experience with AWS services - EC2/EKS, S3, IAM, RDS, and at least one AI service (Bedrock, SageMaker)

• Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes - containerising applications and deploying to orchestrated environments

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and version control (Git/GitLab) - understanding of automated build, test, and deployment workflows

• Solid understanding of REST API design, JSON/gRPC, and integration patterns

• Good problem-solving skills with ability to work independently and deliver to specifications; clear written and verbal communication

Some other highly valued skills may include below:

• Experience with vector databases, semantic search, or embedding-based retrieval systems

• Experience with observability tools - OpenTelemetry, structured logging, or distributed tracing

• Understanding of AI safety concepts - prompt injection risks, PII handling, content filtering, toxicity detection

• Experience implementing evaluation pipelines for LLM or agentic systems (benchmarking, regression detection)

• Knowledge of AI security frameworks - NIST AI RMF, MITRE ATLAS, OWASP LLM Top 10

• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (CloudFormation, Terraform) and GitOps workflows

• Familiarity with model fine-tuning or training techniques (supervised learning, LoRA)

• Understanding of context management and memory systems for stateful AI agents

• Knowledge of banking, financial products, and services

• Understanding of OAuth2/OIDC identity flows and JWT token handling

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role is based in Bengaluru and Pune office.