{"id":4281333,"url":"https://alion.io/job/nimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer","title":"AI Systems Engineer","company":{"id":1911834,"name":"Nimble Approach","domain":"nimbleapproach.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/nimbleapproach","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"services","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Teamtailor","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Manchester, United Kingdom","Sheffield, United Kingdom","Leeds, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Context Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":true},{"name":"Windows","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-13T16:01:41Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-13","last_verified_at":"2026-11-13T20:35:44Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"AI Systems Engineer\nWho we are:\nNimble is a boutique technology consultancy based in the UK North; Sheffield, Leeds and\nManchester. We partner with ambitious clients across the public and private sectors to design,\nbuild, and optimize digital services that deliver real value. We pride ourselves on our agile\nmindset, our creative problem-solving, and our collaborative culture.\nOur projects are diverse and different, just like our ways of working and our people. One of our\nkey focusses is maintaining a strong culture of pragmatic, skilled, egoless people who\ncollaborate to get things done and have lots of fun along the way.\nThe people we want\nWe want curious, tenacious problem solvers who create forward momentum. We value people\nwith a high learning capacity: people who get to the real problem, learn fast in unfamiliar\nterritory and turn ambiguity into a useful next step. We also want kind, low-ego colleagues who\nare direct but constructive, generous with knowledge and good to work with. Brilliance is not a\nlicence for poor behaviour. People should strengthen the team, not make it harder to work in.\nThe role\nThe role sits within Nimble’s Frontier AI Business Unit. While you will be working with a remote\nclient, you must be based in either our Leeds or Manchester office.\nAs an AI Engineer, you will be trusted to deliver complete AI features or small services\nindependently, from integration through release and support. Your work will span the core\ndisciplines required to build secure, useful AI products:\nProduct framing\nData and retrieval\nApplication & context engineering\nEvaluation\nReliable operation\nWhat you will do\nBuild and integrate production AI services, select suitable models, and configure\nparameters while understanding the trade-offs between static context length, latency,\nand output costs.\nBuild and test functional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines that respect\nsource permissions, handling document parsing, retrieval filtering, citation generation,\nand context caching.\nImplement agentic patterns-such as task routing and stateful tool execution-within\nproduction services, ensuring safe execution through deterministic fallbacks and retry\nlimits.\nSet human approval points for higher-risk automated actions and implement\nprogrammatic guardrails to mitigate prompt manipulation and sensitive data leakage.\nImplement automated, repeatable evaluation checks for feature accuracy, response\nlatency, and token cost to validate prompt and agent updates before deployment.\nInstrument AI applications with structured logging and tracing to capture latency, error\nrates, and token spend per call.\nHelp define, size, and break down delivery tickets, evaluating whether a proposed\nfeature delivers tangible user value relative to its cost, latency, and failure rate.\nWhat good looks like after 90 days\nYou are independently delivering robust, complete AI features, ensuring non-\ndeterministic failures degrade gracefully for the user.\nYou have implemented automated evaluation checks and programmatic guardrails that\nthe squad relies on to deploy updates safely.\nYou are collaborating effectively across disciplines, consistently documenting patterns\nfor the team, and explaining technical decisions and AI constraints clearly in reviews.\nYou have established a strong working cadence with product, data, and security\ncolleagues to test systems before release and investigate any failures in use.\nWhat you bring\nEssential\nHas SC Clearance or eligibility for clearance.\nYou are curious, low-ego, willing to challenge assumptions, and able to explain\ntechnical decisions clearly to engineers and clients.\nProven ability to build robust AI features including tool calling, streaming responses,\nstate management, and error handling.\nHands-on experience with RAG pipelines, embedding models, and implementing\ncontext caching to optimise latency and cost.\nExperience running automated, repeatable evaluation checks for feature accuracy and\nbasic safety/injection filtering.\nAbility to verify that cloud API integrations enforce zero-data-retention and non-training\nagreements, securely managing API credentials.\nDesirable\nFamiliarity with standard protocols like MCP or OpenAPI schemas for building tool\nconnectors.\nExperience using an interactive coding workflow with AI assistants while rigorously\nvalidating the generated logic.\nA pragmatic approach to product value, recognising where simple rule-based logic or\nstandard databases might solve a problem more reliably than generative models.\nWhat we offer:\nPrivate healthcare for you and a family member through Westfield Health\nFlexible / Hybrid working\nEnhanced Parental pay\nVolunteer Days\nMultiple Qualified Mental Health First Aider’s with regular 1-1’s available\n£2,000 champion fund to spend as you wish on your own L&D each year\nLaptop and any practicable equipment provided (either a Mac or Windows)\nRegular Nimble Socials (both virtual & physical) including Escape rooms, Lunches,\nAward nights, Bowling, Bouldering and more!\nEngaging and collaborative communities to be involved in\n25 days holiday allowance + bank holidays\nCompany pension (with employer contributions)\nPlease note, we are unable to offer any form of Visa Sponsorship for this role\nEqual Opportunities Statement:\nAt Nimble Approach, we strongly believe that discrimination and victimisation is unacceptable.\nIt is our duty to ensure that no employee or job applicant receives less favourable facilities or\ntreatment (either directly or indirectly) in recruitment or employment on grounds of age,\ndisability, gender / gender reassignment, marriage / civil partnership, pregnancy / maternity,\nrace, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation (the protected characteristics).\nOur aim is that our workforce will be truly representative of society and each employee feels\nrespected and able to give their best. We want everyone at Nimble and those applying to join us\nto feel safe, supported and encouraged so if we can make any adjustments to help with your\napplication or you require any assistance, please reach out to us on\n or reach","description_format":"text","description_chars":6128,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["IT Consulting & Digital Transformation","Custom Software Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-13T20:35:44Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:1","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-13T22:08:22Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/nimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/nimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-13T22:08:22Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":44152,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1911834},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1911834"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fnimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"free","price":{"credits":0,"usd":0},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fnimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fnimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/nimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fnimble-approach-ai-systems-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4281333}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"nimbleapproach.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4281333},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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