Principal Engineer - AI Enablement
Principal Software Engineer - AI Developer Productivity | Belfast | Hybrid
• £85,000 - £95,000 plus a strong benefits package
• Principal-level software engineer... lead through influence, not line management
• Hybrid: 2 days a week in the Belfast office
• Stack-agnostic: Java, .NET, Python, Go and more
• Make AI part of everyday engineering for a global organisation
• Exclusive to Ocho People... not advertised anywhere else
About the Company
Our client is a global financial technology leader whose platforms quietly power everyday life for millions of businesses in more than 175 countries. A major acquisition this year has more than doubled the size of the business, and it is putting over a billion dollars a year into innovation. Belfast is one of its most important engineering hubs, home to teams building systems that the world simply expects to work.
The Role
Think about the best engineer you've worked with who got everyone else excited about AI. The one who built the tool, shared the workflow and showed the team it actually works. That's who this role is for.
This is a software engineering role first. You'll take the best of what's happening in AI across the organisation, from communities and innovation days to experiments in shared repos, and turn it into practical tools that engineers use every day. You'll work across multiple teams in Belfast and the US, backed by senior leadership who are serious about making engineers faster and happier, not about replacing them.
You'll have the freedom to experiment, the trust to make calls, and the scale to see your work make a real difference.
Key Responsibilities
• Build AI skills, agents and workflows that teams can pick up and use straight away
• Decide which AI tools and practices are worth scaling and which are just noise
• Bring AI into CI/CD, testing and release processes safely and with care
• Lead small tiger teams with architects, product managers and subject matter experts to solve real problems
• Measure the impact with clear baseline efficiency metrics
• Set standards for secure, responsible AI use in a highly regulated environment
• Coach and mentor engineers so AI-first working becomes the norm
• Turn ambitious ideas from senior leaders into plans that actually ship
What You'll Need
Essential:
• 10-15 years as a hands-on software engineer, and still close to the code
• Proof you have driven AI adoption in a real engineering team, not just used the tools yourself
• Strong working knowledge of tools and ideas like Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, agents, MCP and context engineering
• A full view of the SDLC, from design through to CI/CD and production
• A careful, quality-first approach... you know when to slow down
• The confidence to explain and influence at every level, from engineers to directors
• Based in Northern Ireland and able to be in Belfast 2 days a week
Desirable:
• Financial services or other regulated industry experience
• Experience setting up developer productivity or DORA metrics
• Hands-on work with LLM frameworks or evaluation tooling
Please note: this is a software engineering leadership role, so it is not suited to data science or ML research profiles.
Why Apply?
• £85,000 - £95,000 plus a strong benefits package
• Hybrid working with only 2 days a week in Belfast
• A rare chance to shape how a global engineering organisation uses AI
• Real backing from senior leadership who want change, not another pilot
• Access to Copilot and multiple LLMs, with room to experiment
• Your work will reach platforms used by millions of businesses
• A quick, simple process with no coding test
• They want to move fast, so you could start within weeks
Next Steps
If you're the engineer who gets everyone else excited about AI, let's talk. Connect with Chanel Gillen on LinkedIn or email chanel@ochopeople.com for a confidential chat.
