AI Engineer (KTP Associate)

DUTIES OF THE POST

The duties of the post will include:
• Identify business requirements for the AI-powered tool approaches suitable for Eckersley O’Callaghan Ltd and the underlying project.
• Create a basic pipeline that queries an AI model in a black-box setting to retrieve the most relevant designs based on user input.
• Assess Eckersley O’Callaghan’s current IT, Data Infrastructure, and software solutions, and clearly understand further functionality, features, automations and capabilities needed.
• Form a Working Group to ensure exploitation occurs at the most appropriate time and to steer the project commercially.
• Explore the already existing data structures, databases, and Reporting and Analytics within the company, relate them to the project and define the initial system architecture.
• Build a foundational dataset for developing and testing the AI-powered tool.
• Develop the user interface (UI) or frontend for the AI-powered tool that provides an intuitive and seamless experience for users.
• Implement RAG pipeline for retrieval of relevant documents and generation of design recommendations.
• User testing and validation of the AI-powered tool.
• Write the testing and evaluation report.
• Write research papers on the developed AI-powered tool for submission to conferences and journals.
These duties are a guide to the work that the post holder will initially be required to undertake. They may be changed from time to time to meet changing circumstances.

KEY REQUIREMENTS

• PhD or Masters in computer science, AI, or relevant discipline with a publication track record
• Advanced skills in a relevant programming language (Java/Python/C#)
• Version control of best practice, annotation of code
• Knowledge and experience of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Vision-Language Models (VLMs)
• Knowledge of data architecture, data cleansing and data lakes that enable training AI models with proprietary legacy databases.
• Experience or knowledge in developing and deploying to production AI solutions based on open source LLMs, VLMs and RAG models, utilising proprietary knowledge base.
• User Interface development
• Advanced skills in a relevant programming language (Java/Python/C#)
• Communicating complex technical concepts to a range of audiences
• Excellent written and spoken English
• Ability to collaborate with individuals with different abilities and skills, building relationships
• Well organised, ability to strategically plan work packages to meet milestones
• Ability to work independently

BENEFITS

As a KTP Associate, the post will offer the following benefits:
• A personal development budget of £5,333 (exclusive of salary).
• Management training and mentoring by an Innovate UK KTP Adviser.
• An interesting and challenging role, with exposure to a variety of stakeholders.
• Full access to university resources to complete the project.
• World-leading Academic and Company project supervision, with project support by a dedicated, sector leading KTP Office.

LOCATION

Eckersley O’Callaghan’s offices in Central London.

The University of Essex in partnership with Eckersley O’Callaghan offers an exciting opportunity to a graduate with the relevant skills and knowledge to build and integrate a bespoke multi-modal AI tool for the automation of structural and façade engineering design workflows, based on a catalogue of previous project data.

This post is full-time and fixed term for 32 months, based at Eckersley O’Callaghan’s offices in London.