Motorway
Used car marketplace
PrincipalGenerativeAIEngineer
“Principal Generative AI Engineer at Motorway. Skills: Generative AI, AI Architecture, LLM Expertise, Responsible AI. Set overarching architecture for GenAI. Design and build hardest single pieces of work”
What You'll Achieve.
Shape GenAI platform trajectory; Hold sign-off on materially complex AI systems; Veto implementations not meeting bar; Land high-stakes calls with confidence; Contribute meaningfully to AI usage; Contribute meaningfully to overall AI strategy; Contribute meaningfully to AI infrastructure budget; Define how GenAI is built; Define how GenAI is evaluated; Shape unit economics for years; Ensure alignment with regulatory deadlines
Industry & Context.
Design and build the hardest single pieces of work; Taking on problems nobody else is well-placed to solve; Leading highest-risk, highest-reward technical bets
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
8+ years building production AI/ML systems, 2 years at the cutting edge of GenAI, Python, modern API-driven architectures, cloud infrastructure (AWS or equivalent), production engineering instincts (CI/CD, observability, SLOs, cost attribution), LLM APIs, prompt engineering, RAG (hybrid retrieval, chunking strategy, semantic caching, re-ranking), agentic architectures (multi-step, multi-agent, tool use, memory), evaluation frameworks, LLMOps, fine-tuning, Deep understanding of LLM capabilities and limitations, Experience setting architectural standards adopted across multiple engineering teams over multiple years, High-stakes build-vs-buy judgment, Strategic grasp of responsible AI and AI governance, practical experience aligning engineering decisions to NIST AI RMF, the EU AI Act or comparable frameworks, Calm, direct communication with executive and board-level audiences, Coaching credibility with senior engineers
Nice to Have
external technical presence (publications, well-known open-source contributions or conference talks), led an organisation through a major AI paradigm shift, working knowledge of the ML Engineering and platform layer (serving infrastructure, AI gateways, cost attribution, multi-model routing), advised commercial leadership on vendor and partnership strategy, worked in a regulated, safety-critical or trust-heavy domain
What You'll Do.
Set overarching architecture for GenAI
Design and build hardest single pieces of work
Hold sign-off on architectural decisions
Advise on build-vs-buy calls for AI infrastructure
latency and throughput optimisation
Define principles for emerging paradigms
Define responsible AI principles
Align with NIST AI RMF
Align with ICO guidance
Own relationships with model providers
Own relationships with infrastructure providers
Coach engineers across the function
Shape hiring and review processes
Set cultural bar for safety
Set cultural bar for evaluation
Set cultural bar for production quality
Identify what Motorway should stop pursuing
Represent Motorway externally
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Work closely with engineering leadership; Work closely with wider Engineering org; Advise Director of Data and AI; Advise CPO; Advise wider exec; Pair with senior engineers; Coach engineers across the function
Communication Scope
Calm, direct communication with executive and board-level audiences; Compress technical complexity into decisions
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