We are hiring a Lead AI Engineer to join the AI Lab that will help shape and build the next generation of AI‑powered Economist experiences. This is a permanent, senior role based in our London headquarters, providing senior technical leadership and continuity during a maternity leave period and thereafter as a core senior member of the Lab. The role is hands‑on, combining strong engineering judgement with deep familiarity with modern AI systems to turn promising ideas into working prototypes, assess emerging technologies, and guide technical decisions across the AI Lab.
Responsibilities
- Provide senior technical leadership for the AI Lab’s work, ensuring continuity and momentum during a period of maternity cover.
- Design, build and iterate on prototypes and experimental concepts using frontier AI capabilities across areas such as text, audio, voice, video and multimodal experiences.
- Lead technical investigation and experimentation, including testing new models, methods and workflows.
- Partner with commercial, editorial and other technology teams to support the testing, scaling and launch of concepts developed by the AI Lab.
- Shape and implement the right technical architectures for AI Lab prototypes and experiments – balancing speed, quality, flexibility and longer‑term scalability.
- Help the Lab identify where advances in AI could create distinctive value for Economist audiences and products.
- Contribute to the Lab’s longer‑term technical direction, helping decide what capabilities to build, test or scale over time.
- Support and, where appropriate, mentor other technical contributors working on Lab initiatives.
What Sort Of Person We Are Looking For
- A strong technical builder with deep curiosity who enjoys turning emerging ideas into tangible products and prototypes.
- Comfortable taking ownership and being autonomous in an uncertain, fast‑moving environment.
- Works well in a small team with the freedom to make decisions and communicate clearly with others.
- Combines technical knowledge with business sense to ensure that research supports company goals and editorial standards.
- Able to switch between hands‑on engineering, technical strategy and clear communication with non‑technical colleagues.
- Understands The Economist’s core values of classical liberalism, intellectual rigour and editorial independence.
Specific Skills And Expertise
- Significant experience building with modern generative AI models and systems in production or advanced prototype settings.
- Strong software engineering skills, with the ability to design and implement robust prototypes quickly and thoughtfully.
- Experience working across multiple modalities such as text, audio, voice, video or conversational interfaces.
- Good judgement in selecting and evaluating models, tooling and system architectures for different use cases.
- Ability to explain technical concepts, opportunities and constraints clearly to non‑technical audiences.
- Experience defining practical evaluation approaches for AI systems, including quality, reliability and usability.
Strong Candidates Might Also Have
- Experience in a startup, innovation, advanced product or R&D environment.
- Experience in building B2C customer‑facing AI products or features in content‑rich or editorial domains.
- Interest or experience in media, journalism, information products or knowledge‑rich domains.
- Familiarity with fine‑tuning, benchmarking, model evaluation and experimentation workflows.
- Experience with orchestration frameworks, tool‑using systems and agentic patterns.
- Experience leading senior technical work during periods of ambiguity, change or team transition.
Benefits
Our benefits package is designed to support your wellbeing, growth and work‑life balance. It includes a highly competitive pension or 401(k) plan, private health insurance, and 24/7 access to counselling and wellbeing resources through our Employee Assistance Program. We also offer a range of lifestyle benefits, including a Work From Anywhere program allowing you to work from any legal location for up to 25 days per year, generous annual and parental leave, and dedicated days off for volunteering and moving home. You will also be given free access to all The Economist content, including an online subscription, apps, podcasts and more.
Working Arrangements
The majority of our roles operate on a hybrid working pattern, with 3+ days office attendance required.
#J-18808-Ljbffr”, “datePosted”: “2026-05-07”, “hiringOrganization”: { “@type”: “Organization”, “name”: “The Economist”, “sameAs”: “https://uk.whatjobs.com/pub_api__cpl__425536614__4861?utm_campaign=publisher&utm_medium=api&utm_source=4861&geoID=33” }, “jobLocation”: { “@type”: “Place”, “address”: { “@type”: “PostalAddress”, “addressLocality”: “London” } } }We are hiring a Lead AI Engineer to join the AI Lab that will help shape and build the next generation of AI‑powered Economist experiences. This is a permanent, senior role based in our London headquarters, providing senior technical leadership and continuity during a maternity leave period and thereafter as a core senior member of the Lab. The role is hands‑on, combining strong engineering judgement with deep familiarity with modern AI systems to turn promising ideas into working prototypes, assess emerging technologies, and guide technical decisions across the AI Lab.
Responsibilities
- Provide senior technical leadership for the AI Lab’s work, ensuring continuity and momentum during a period of maternity cover.
- Design, build and iterate on prototypes and experimental concepts using frontier AI capabilities across areas such as text, audio, voice, video and multimodal experiences.
- Lead technical investigation and experimentation, including testing new models, methods and workflows.
- Partner with commercial, editorial and other technology teams to support the testing, scaling and launch of concepts developed by the AI Lab.
- Shape and implement the right technical architectures for AI Lab prototypes and experiments – balancing speed, quality, flexibility and longer‑term scalability.
- Help the Lab identify where advances in AI could create distinctive value for Economist audiences and products.
- Contribute to the Lab’s longer‑term technical direction, helping decide what capabilities to build, test or scale over time.
- Support and, where appropriate, mentor other technical contributors working on Lab initiatives.
What Sort Of Person We Are Looking For
- A strong technical builder with deep curiosity who enjoys turning emerging ideas into tangible products and prototypes.
- Comfortable taking ownership and being autonomous in an uncertain, fast‑moving environment.
- Works well in a small team with the freedom to make decisions and communicate clearly with others.
- Combines technical knowledge with business sense to ensure that research supports company goals and editorial standards.
- Able to switch between hands‑on engineering, technical strategy and clear communication with non‑technical colleagues.
- Understands The Economist’s core values of classical liberalism, intellectual rigour and editorial independence.
Specific Skills And Expertise
- Significant experience building with modern generative AI models and systems in production or advanced prototype settings.
- Strong software engineering skills, with the ability to design and implement robust prototypes quickly and thoughtfully.
- Experience working across multiple modalities such as text, audio, voice, video or conversational interfaces.
- Good judgement in selecting and evaluating models, tooling and system architectures for different use cases.
- Ability to explain technical concepts, opportunities and constraints clearly to non‑technical audiences.
- Experience defining practical evaluation approaches for AI systems, including quality, reliability and usability.
Strong Candidates Might Also Have
- Experience in a startup, innovation, advanced product or R&D environment.
- Experience in building B2C customer‑facing AI products or features in content‑rich or editorial domains.
- Interest or experience in media, journalism, information products or knowledge‑rich domains.
- Familiarity with fine‑tuning, benchmarking, model evaluation and experimentation workflows.
- Experience with orchestration frameworks, tool‑using systems and agentic patterns.
- Experience leading senior technical work during periods of ambiguity, change or team transition.
Benefits
Our benefits package is designed to support your wellbeing, growth and work‑life balance. It includes a highly competitive pension or 401(k) plan, private health insurance, and 24/7 access to counselling and wellbeing resources through our Employee Assistance Program. We also offer a range of lifestyle benefits, including a Work From Anywhere program allowing you to work from any legal location for up to 25 days per year, generous annual and parental leave, and dedicated days off for volunteering and moving home. You will also be given free access to all The Economist content, including an online subscription, apps, podcasts and more.
Working Arrangements
The majority of our roles operate on a hybrid working pattern, with 3+ days office attendance required.
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