AI Engineer - Senior

About the Role
The Senior AI Engineer plays a crucial role in leading the design, build, and deployment of production-grade AI and GenAI solutions using governed, high-quality data. This position ensures that AI systems earn trust by being accurate, explainable, and secure. The Senior AI Engineer will take complex use cases from prototype to production using the Microsoft Azure AI ecosystem, ensuring compliance with UAE AI and data regulations. This role serves as the technical authority, overseeing the architecture and quality of AI solutions, mentoring junior engineers, and setting engineering standards regarding responsible AI initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end design, development, and deployment of AI/ML and GenAI applications such as RAG assistants, document intelligence, classification, prediction, and Arabic/English NLP use cases.
• Architect enterprise-scale retrieval-augmented generation solutions using Azure OpenAI/Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, vector indexing, hybrid retrieval, re-ranking, prompt orchestration, and grounding on curated Gold-layer data.
• Define and implement responsible-AI controls covering explainability, bias testing, content safety, and hallucination controls, ensuring alignment with the UAE Charter for AI and Dubai's AI ethics principles.
• Design secure, scalable APIs and integration patterns connecting AI capabilities with enterprise applications, maintaining strict access control and data protection measures.
• Collaborate with data architects and data engineers to create AI-ready data products, feature pipelines, and data-quality gates that satisfy data quality and classification standards.
• Establish evaluation frameworks and KPIs for accuracy, relevance, latency, cost, and implement automated testing and release criteria.
• Manage CI/CD, model/version monitoring, drift detection, observability, and cost management for production AI workloads.
• Ensure adherence to UAE PDPL, Dubai Data Law, and DESC ISR requirements within AI workloads by coordinating with security and data-protection teams.
• Act as the technical lead for the AI workstream, mentoring junior engineers and ensuring high standards in architecture and delivery quality.
• Consult senior stakeholders on the feasibility, risks, roadmaps, and trade-offs of AI projects, translating business needs into clear technical solutions.
• Produce and review documentation such as model cards, solution architecture, design decisions, and audit evidence for AI components.
• Enable capability building for client counterparts in AI engineering practices, ensuring sustainment post-handover.

Must Have

• AI certification.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4 years in designing, building, and deploying AI/ML or GenAI solutions in production.
• Proven track record as a technical lead, mentoring engineers, and owning solution architecture and delivery quality.
• Expert Python skills, with extensive experience in frameworks (LangChain, Semantic Kernel, PyTorch, scikit-learn, or Hugging Face) and building LLM workflows.
• In-depth experience with Azure OpenAI/Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, Azure Machine Learning, and vector databases.
• Solid background in designing scalable APIs and services (REST/FastAPI), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), CI/CD processes, and infrastructure as code.
• Deep understanding of MLOps/LLMOps practices, model evaluation, and responsible-AI principles.
• Familiarity with lakehouse architecture, Microsoft Fabric, and data governance through Purview.
• Knowledge of UAE AI and data regulations, including the UAE AI Charter, UAE PDPL, Dubai Data Law, and DESC ISR.
• Excellent English communication, documentation, and stakeholder management skills.

Good to Have

• Arabic proficiency and experience in Arabic NLP.
• Relevant Microsoft Azure AI or architecture certifications (e.g., Azure AI Engineer Associate or Azure Solutions Architect Expert).
• Experience working in government or regulated sectors.