Location
London

Hours
Full Time

Salary
Negotiable

About the Role
Moody's is seeking a highly experienced Staff Software Engineer specializing in AI to design, develop, and lead the delivery of scalable AI platforms and intelligent applications. You will act as a hands-on technical leader, deeply involved in coding, reviewing, debugging, and improving production systems that power AI-driven products and services. Your work will include building backend services, APIs, data and inference pipelines, and platform capabilities to support real-time and batch AI workloads at enterprise scale. You will implement advanced large language model applications using techniques such as retrieval-augmented generation, prompt orchestration, evaluation frameworks, model optimization, agentic workflows, and tool integration.

As a key technical decision-maker, you will ensure high standards of code maintainability, system performance, reliability, security, scalability, and cost efficiency. You will establish engineering best practices through hands-on contributions including code reviews, design reviews, automated testing, observability, monitoring, and operational excellence. Championing machine learning operations practices such as model lifecycle management, prompt versioning, automated evaluation, deployment pipelines, and continuous improvement will be essential.

You will collaborate closely with product managers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, engineering leaders, and business stakeholders to translate strategic priorities into robust, scalable technical solutions. Additionally, you will build reusable frameworks, libraries, developer tooling, and platform components that accelerate AI development across teams without unnecessary complexity. Evaluating emerging AI technologies through prototypes and production-readiness assessments and mentoring engineers through coaching, pairing, and feedback will be key aspects of your role.

Join Moody's Digital Content and Innovation (DC&I) team, where engineers, data scientists, and AI specialists work together to build next-generation AI-powered products. You will contribute across the full AI lifecycle, from experimentation to large-scale production deployment, while shaping reusable platforms and responsible AI practices. This role offers the opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI challenges, contribute directly to production code and architecture, and be part of a culture that values curiosity, innovation, knowledge sharing, and continuous growth.

Experience
8+ years of software engineering experience with deep hands-on expertise designing, coding, testing, and operating scalable, resilient, production-grade backend systems and cloud-native services. Expert-level coding skills in modern languages such as Python, TypeScript, Go, or similar, with the ability to contribute high-quality production code and guide technical direction. Proven experience building enterprise AI applications using large language models, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation, prompt engineering, orchestration frameworks, evaluation methods, and model optimization techniques. Demonstrated ability to take complex AI solutions from prototype to production, balancing performance, scalability, reliability, security, maintainability, and cost. Strong knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and container orchestration technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, or ECS in production environments. Experience designing and implementing APIs, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, data pipelines, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, vector databases, observability, and automated deployment pipelines. Proven leadership in mentoring engineers through design and code reviews, pairing, debugging, and problem solving. Deep expertise in AI with a track record of driving strategic transformation and operational efficiency, managing AI-related risks, ethical governance, and fostering responsible AI adoption.

About you
You are a hands-on technical leader who thrives on solving complex AI engineering challenges and delivering production-quality solutions. You have strong communication and collaboration skills, enabling you to work effectively with cross-functional teams and stakeholders. You are passionate about innovation, continuous learning, and mentoring others. You embrace responsible AI practices and ethical considerations in AI development and deployment.

Qualifications
Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.