Senior AI Specialist

Who we are

Optima Partners is an advanced data and business consultancy headquartered in Edinburgh, UK. We are a practitioner-led organisation that collaborates with top consumer brands to drive transformation and foster customer-centricity through our expertise in customer strategy, innovative design, and advanced data science and engineering.

We work with leading consumer brands to tackle and overcome complex business and customer problems, drive transformation and champion customer-centric agendas. We are proud to include leading UK and global brands among our current clients, including Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group, Bank of Ireland, Nationwide, Aviva, Biogen, Eon Next, OVO, Virgin Media O2, BT, HMD Global, Centrica and GSK. We are obsessive about delivering value for our clients and work in a collaborative, engaged and creative way with our colleagues and clients. We strive to support the transition of knowledge and capability into strategic teams.

The opportunity

We are looking for a Senior AI Specialist to design, build and deploy practical AI solutions that help clients transform business processes, improve decision-making and increase efficiency. With a strong focus on generative AI, agentic AI and retrieval-augmented generation, this role combines hands-on technical delivery with the ability to understand commercial challenges and turn them into scalable, robust solutions.

As part of Optima’s growing AI capability, you will work closely with colleagues across data science, data engineering, consulting and client engagement to identify high-impact use cases and deliver AI-enabled solutions that embed effectively into clients’ operating environments.

What you will be doing

• Design, develop and deploy AI solutions, including LLM applications, RAG-based systems, intelligent automation workflows and agentic AI solutions.

• Build and optimise end-to-end AI pipelines, APIs and services using Python, integrating with enterprise platforms, databases and third-party systems.

• Work with clients and business stakeholders to identify high-impact use cases and translate requirements into scalable AI-driven solutions.

• Evaluate and improve solution performance, accuracy, reliability, scalability, governance and operational effectiveness.

• Contribute to accelerators, prototypes and proof-of-concept initiatives that demonstrate measurable business value.

• Collaborate with Optima’s wider community to embed AI-enabled thinking into business processes and delivery methodologies.

• Support client workshops, knowledge sharing, training and AI adoption initiatives, acting as a trusted advisor on emerging AI capabilities.

What skills we would like you to have

• Experience designing, building or deploying AI applications, LLM solutions, RAG solutions, AI agents or intelligent automation workflows.

• Strong Python and SQL skills, with experience using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph or similar technologies.

• Knowledge of vector databases, prompt engineering, API integration, AI orchestration platforms and cloud environments, with Azure experience preferred.

• Familiarity with Docker, CI/CD, MLOps, enterprise system integration and AI governance principles would be advantageous.

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Commercial curiosity, a proactive mindset and a passion for emerging AI technologies and identifying opportunities to create business value.

This is an exciting opportunity to work directly with clients, delivering innovative AI solutions and helping organisations realise the potential of generative and agentic AI at scale while developing your career in a specialist data and AI consultancy.

What we offer

• Competitive base salary.

• Inclusion in our annual discretionary bonus plan with an on-target performance bonus of up to 15%.

• Up to 37 days holiday inclusive of personal and public allocations. Seven are fixed days for Christmas and New Year, and 30 are floating days taken at your discretion, subject to client scheduling and line manager approval.

• Private medical insurance, single cover.

• Group life and income protection insurance.

• Salary sacrifice pension scheme after three months’ employment.

• Access to over 1,000 perks and discounts via an employee discount portal.

• Dedicated development time plus tools and funding to support personal and professional development.