Hybrid Principal AI Engineer

at Encompass Corporation

• Job title: Principal AI Engineer
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Postgraduate Degree
• Tech skills: Cloud, Python
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Glasgow, United Kingdom

About the role

• Principal Engineer overseeing AI and data science strategy for financial compliance. Leading team to develop intelligent systems leveraging advanced technologies.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the AI and data science strategy across Encompass products, aligned with our vision for intelligent KYC automation.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Executive teams to identify opportunities for AI-driven innovation, especially around data acquisition and reasoning.
• Architect and lead the development of a cutting-edge agentic AI system for intelligent data discovery, extraction, and decision-making.
• Oversee the integration of LLMs, knowledge graphs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and reinforcement learning for autonomous task execution.
• Champion the application of explainable and trustworthy AI principles in all solutions.
• Serve as a player-coach—writing code, prototyping models, conducting experiments, and reviewing designs.
• Establish best practices for data science, MLOps, and model deployment at scale.
• Guide the selection of AI technologies, platforms, and tooling.
• Mentor team members and the broader business, fostering a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and continuous learning.
• Communicate complex technical concepts to business stakeholders and influence product strategy.
• Represent Encompass in thought leadership forums and industry discussions on AI in RegTech and compliance.

Requirements

• Proven experience in data science, AI, or ML roles with increasing leadership responsibility (people management experience not required).
• Deep expertise in building intelligent systems with one or more of the following: LLMs, agent frameworks, RAG, knowledge representation, or autonomous data pipelines.
• Strong programming and software engineering skills (Python preferred; familiarity with cloud-native and MLOps tools).
• Demonstrated experience in building and deploying AI systems in production environments.
• Strong understanding of data governance, bias, fairness, and regulatory considerations in AI.
• Experience in the financial services, RegTech, or compliance domain is a strong plus.
• Advanced degree (PhD or MSc) in Computer Science, Data Science, AI, or a related field.

Benefits

• Participation in our industry leading share options scheme
• Private Medical Plan
• 20 days a year Work From Anywhere policy for all staff
• Flexible-first working policy
• Enhanced annual, personal and parental leave schemes.
• Paid volunteering leave programme
• Employer recognition and employee assistance programmes