Data Scientist- London

FDM is a global business and technology consultancy seeking a Data Scientist to work for our client within the energy sector. This is initially a 12 month contract with very good prospects to extend and will be a hybrid role based in London.

 We’re looking for engineers who think holistically, automate relentlessly, and are fluent in the fast-moving world of AI tooling and infrastructure but grounded in disciplined engineering principles. Our client is building high-impact AI-powered applications that deliver real business value at speed. As a Senior AI Engineer, you’ll play a critical role in building and deploying scalable AI-powered applications through solid software engineering excellence combined with pragmatic use of modern AI capabilities. This is a role for seasoned engineers who are excited about applying AI in practical and scalable ways.

We’re looking for individuals who thrive at the intersection of disciplined software development and modern AI applications. You should be comfortable working across the full lifecycle of a product- from ideation and architecture to deployment and automation- while navigating ambiguity and driving toward execution. Strong systems thinking, ownership mindset, and the ability to ship value fast are essential.

Responsibilities

•  Design, develop, and maintain production-grade AI applications and services using modern software engineering practices (CI/CD, testing, observability, cloud-native design).
•  Define and implement foundational platforms and tools (e.g., conversational bots, AI-powered search, unstructured data processing, GenBI) that are reusable and scalable across the enterprise.
• Participate in cross functional team initiatives—embedded projects with business stakeholders- to rapidly build and deploy AI solutions that solve high-priority business problems.
•  Evaluate and integrate existing AI tools, frameworks, and APIs (e.g., LLMs, vector DBs, retrieval-augmented generation, AI agents) into robust applications.
• Champion automation in workflows- from data management ingestion and preprocessing to evaluation, to model integration and deployment.
• Collaborate with data scientists, product managers, and other engineers to ensure end-to-end delivery and reliability of AI products.
• Stay current with emerging AI technologies, but prioritize practical application and delivery over experimental research.
• Contribute to the internal knowledge base, tooling libraries, and documentation to scale AI engineering best practices across the organization.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience; ability to independently design and ship complex systems in production.
•  Strong programming skills in Python (preferred), Java, or similar languages, with experience in developing microservices, APIs, and backend systems. · Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to balance engineering rigor with delivery speed.
• Solid understanding of software architecture, cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, or GCP), and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience integrating machine learning models into production systems (e.g., LLMs via APIs, fine-tuning, RAG patterns, embeddings, agents and crew of agents etc.).
• Ability to move quickly while maintaining code quality, test coverage, and operational excellence. Preferred:
• Familiarity with AI/ML tools such as LangChain, Haystack, Hugging Face, Weaviate, or similar ecosystems.
• Hands-on experience with Retrieval Augmented Generation applications, AI agents and systems built around them.
• Experience using GenAI frameworks such as LlamaIndex, Crew AI, AutoGen, or similar agentic/LLM orchestration toolkits.
• Exposure to working with unstructured data (documents, conversations, images) and transforming it into usable structured formats.
• Experience building chatbots, search systems, or generative AI interfaces.
• Background in working within platform engineering or internal developer tools teams.
• Prior experience working in an embedded (forward-deployed) team model with business stakeholders. · Experience building production grade, reliable AI applications

• Career coaching, mentoring and access to upskilling throughout your entire FDM career
• Assignments with global companies and opportunities to work abroad
• Opportunity to re-skill and up-skill into new areas, develop non-linear career paths and build a skillset within your field
• Annual leave and work-place pension