{"id":4240539,"url":"https://alion.io/job/projects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-engineer","title":"Freelance Senior AI Engineer","company":{"id":691093,"name":"Projects by IF","domain":"projectsbyif.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/projectsbyif","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"freelance","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-13T10:24:48Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-13","last_verified_at":"2026-11-13T12:01:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Role Details:\nLevel: Lead\nStart Date: December\nDuration: 6 months\nDay Rate: Dependent on experience\nWeekly hours: 5 days/ week\nLocation: Hybrid, 2 days a week in London\nWe're looking for a Senior AI Engineer to help us reimagine a function of government as part of an agentic ecosystem. You'll join a small multidisciplinary team of designers, researchers and engineers, working closely with civil servants and the department's own technical teams.\nThe work is exploratory. We will learn by building and iterating, leaning on emerging best practices and patterns. We need someone who can build working prototypes quickly, while thinking deeply about the implications of technical decisions.\nKey skills and experience\nMust haves:\nDesign and build prototypes that expose services to agents through APIs, MCP servers and agent to agent protocols\n\nDesign and build agentic systems end to end, including orchestration, tool integrations, and memory and state\n\nBuild guardrails, evaluations and monitoring to check agents act safely and correctly\n\nWork with designers and researchers to test agent-led journeys with real users\n\nAdvise on technical feasibility, risks and standards, in plain language\n\nTurn prototypes into patterns, documentation and code that other government teams can reuse\n\nNice to have:\nSubstantial software engineering experience, with recent hands-on work building LLM-based applications or agents\n\nStrong knowledge of tool use, agent frameworks and orchestration, and protocols such as MCP, and API design\n\nPractical experience with guardrails, evaluation, testing and monitoring of AI systems\n\nSound judgement on security, privacy and safety risks, including prompt injection and misuse\n\nComfort working in fast, uncertain early-stage work, and explaining technical trade-offs to non-technical people\n\nLocation\nYou will need to be able to work from our offices (London) for a minimum of two days a week.\n1. Application\nPlease attach your CV, plus a portfolio or any work you would like to also share.\n2. Initial screening call\nA short conversation to cover the basics - your timezone, working languages, availability, and a chance for you to ask early questions about the role and how we work.\n3. Technical interview (~60 minutes)\nA deeper conversation about your technical background and experience. We’ll talk through how you’ve approached real problems, the decisions you’ve made, and how you’d apply that thinking to the work at IF.\n4. Ways of working interview (~45-60 minutes)\nA conversation about how you collaborate, communicate, and work with others - including how you operate in an advisory capacity with clients and teams.\nWe’ll aim to keep you updated at every stage and let you know the outcome promptly after each step.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2753,"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":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Creative Agencies"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-13T12:01:13Z"}],"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":30,"reasons":["conf:5","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-13T17:10:38Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/projects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/projects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-13T17:10:38Z","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":34337,"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":691093},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=691093"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-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%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-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%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-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/projects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-senior-ai-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4240539}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"projectsbyif.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4240539},"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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