{"id":713989,"url":"https://alion.io/job/optimapartners-senior-ai-specialist","title":"Senior AI Specialist","company":{"id":678916,"name":"Optima Partners","domain":"optimapartners.co.uk","url":"https://alion.io/company/optimapartners","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Teamtailor","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":87,"open_postings":6,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.333,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":84,"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Edinburgh, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":84000,"max_usd":150000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":49},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"LangChain","optional":false},{"name":"LangGraph","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-11T07:33:31Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-11","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T00:09:06Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":86,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":85},"description":"Who we are\nOptima 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.\nWe 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.\nThe opportunity\nWe 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.\nAs 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.\nWhat you will be doing\nDesign, develop and deploy AI solutions, including LLM applications, RAG-based systems, intelligent automation workflows and agentic AI solutions.\n\nBuild and optimise end-to-end AI pipelines, APIs and services using Python, integrating with enterprise platforms, databases and third-party systems.\n\nWork with clients and business stakeholders to identify high-impact use cases and translate requirements into scalable AI-driven solutions.\n\nEvaluate and improve solution performance, accuracy, reliability, scalability, governance and operational effectiveness.\n\nContribute to accelerators, prototypes and proof-of-concept initiatives that demonstrate measurable business value.\n\nCollaborate with Optima’s wider community to embed AI-enabled thinking into business processes and delivery methodologies.\n\nSupport client workshops, knowledge sharing, training and AI adoption initiatives, acting as a trusted advisor on emerging AI capabilities.\n\nWhat skills we would like you to have\nExperience designing, building or deploying AI applications, LLM solutions, RAG solutions, AI agents or intelligent automation workflows.\n\nStrong Python and SQL skills, with experience using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph or similar technologies.\n\nKnowledge of vector databases, prompt engineering, API integration, AI orchestration platforms and cloud environments, with Azure experience preferred.\n\nFamiliarity with Docker, CI/CD, MLOps, enterprise system integration and AI governance principles would be advantageous.\n\nStrong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical audiences.\n\nCommercial curiosity, a proactive mindset and a passion for emerging AI technologies and identifying opportunities to create business value.\n\nThis 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.\nWhat we offer\nCompetitive base salary.\n\nInclusion in our annual discretionary bonus plan with an on-target performance bonus of up to 15%.\n\nUp 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.\n\nPrivate medical insurance, single cover.\n\nGroup life and income protection insurance.\n\nSalary sacrifice pension scheme after three months’ employment.\n\nAccess to over 1,000 perks and discounts via an employee discount portal.\n\nDedicated development time plus tools and funding to support personal and professional development.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4444,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Health insurance","Professional development"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T05:29:22Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Skilled Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Skilled Worker","cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-05T06:29:30+00:00","sources":["UK Home Office: register of licensed sponsors (workers)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":35,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.789,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":85,"expected_fill_days":84,"reasons":["conf:5","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/optimapartners-senior-ai-specialist","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/optimapartners-senior-ai-specialist.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-06T04:59:14Z","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":8641,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-07T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"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":678916},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=678916"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Foptimapartners-senior-ai-specialist"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"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%2Foptimapartners-senior-ai-specialist"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"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%2Foptimapartners-senior-ai-specialist"},{"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/optimapartners-senior-ai-specialist\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Foptimapartners-senior-ai-specialist"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":713989}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"optimapartners.co.uk","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":713989},"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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