AI Engineer - Senior

About the Role
As a Senior AI Engineer, you will play a critical role in establishing trust in AI within government institutions by ensuring that solutions are accurate, explainable, and secure. You will lead the design, build, and deployment of production-grade AI and GenAI solutions utilizing high-quality governed data. Your responsibilities include owning the technical architecture and quality of AI solutions from inception to production, ensuring compliance with UAE AI and data regulations. You will collaborate with various teams, guide junior engineers, and set standards for engineering practices in responsible AI.

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 leveraging Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, vector indexing, hybrid retrieval, and prompt orchestration while optimizing for accuracy, latency, and cost.
• Define and operationalize responsible-AI controls, focusing on explainability, bias testing, content safety, and human-in-the-loop reviews, aligning with the UAE Charter for AI Development and Dubai's AI ethics principles.
• Design secure and scalable APIs and integration patterns to connect AI capabilities with enterprise applications, enforcing role-based access and data security measures.
• Collaborate with data architects and engineers to define AI-ready data products and ensure data quality standards.
• Establish evaluation frameworks, including key performance indicators for accuracy, relevance, and cost, and implement automated testing and release criteria.
• Manage CI/CD, model versioning, monitoring, and cost management for AI workloads in production.
• Ensure compliance with UAE PDPL, Dubai Data Law, and DESC ISR for AI workloads, addressing data residency and PII handling in collaboration with security teams.
• Serve as a technical lead for AI initiatives: mentor junior engineers, facilitate design reviews, and uphold engineering standards.
• Provide technical guidance to senior stakeholders, translating business requirements into actionable technical solutions.
• Create and review documentation for model cards, architecture designs, and audit evidence for AI components.
• Lead capability building efforts in AI engineering best practices to ensure sustainability post-handover.

Must Have

• AI certification.
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, including at least 4 years in building and deploying AI/ML or GenAI solutions in production environments.
• Proven experience in a technical lead role, mentoring engineers, and owning solution architecture.
• Expert-level Python proficiency with experience in frameworks such as LangChain, Semantic Kernel, PyTorch, scikit-learn, or Hugging Face.
• Hands-on experience with Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, and hybrid retrieval techniques.
• Strong skills in API design (REST/FastAPI), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code.
• Comprehensive knowledge of MLOps, model evaluation, and responsible-AI practices.
• Understanding of lakehouse architecture and data governance through Purview.
• Familiarity with UAE AI and data regulations, including the UAE AI Charter and Dubai Data Law.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills in English.

Good to Have

• Proficiency in Arabic and experience with Arabic NLP.
• Relevant Microsoft Azure AI or architecture certifications (e.g., Azure AI Engineer Associate).
• Experience in government or regulated sectors.

Location and Employment Details

• Location: Abu Dhabi and Dubai, UAE
• Engagement Model: Full-time
• Employment Type: OCS
• Duration: 6 months
• Languages Required: Arabic, English