Help business teams move faster with practical AI applications that solve real operational problems

Some engineers love technology for technology’s sake. This role is different. At HeadFirst x Impellam, we are looking for someone who enjoys figuring things out, understands how organisations work and gets energy from building solutions that genuinely improve the day-to-day reality of teams across the business.

As an Applied AI Engineer, you work directly with departments such as Finance, HR, Commercial and Marketing to simplify processes, remove friction and help people work smarter through AI, automation and lightweight internal applications. You are not expected to have every framework, platform or tool mastered on day one. What matters more is how you think, how quickly you learn and how effectively you turn ambiguity into practical outcomes.

This is a highly visible role with real business impact. You will spend as much time understanding workflows, challenging assumptions and shaping solutions as you do building them. The people who thrive here are curious, pragmatic and comfortable operating close to stakeholders rather than hidden behind tickets or isolated engineering backlogs.

Your impact

As an Applied AI Engineer, you become part consultant, part builder and part problem solver. You embed directly with business teams to understand how work actually happens. Sometimes the challenge is operational inefficiency. Sometimes it is fragmented tooling, repetitive manual work or slow decision-making caused by disconnected systems and unclear information flows.

Your role is to identify where AI, automation or lightweight applications can create immediate value and then help make that value real quickly and pragmatically. Rather than spending months designing perfect systems, you focus on delivering usable solutions fast, gathering feedback early and improving continuously. That could mean building an internal workflow tool, creating an AI-powered assistant for operational teams or simplifying reporting and approvals through automation.

You work within a modern Databricks and AI-enabled ecosystem, but technology is never the end goal. The real objective is helping teams operate more effectively, make better decisions and remove operational bottlenecks. AI plays a central role in how you work. AI coding assistants and agent-based workflows help accelerate development and experimentation, allowing you to move quickly while still maintaining ownership over quality, usability and adoption.

At the same time, you collaborate closely with Platform, Data and Engineering teams to ensure the solutions you deliver fit within a scalable and secure organisational environment.

What you will do

• Work closely with business stakeholders to understand operational challenges, workflows and inefficiencies;
• Translate ideas and business needs into practical tools, automations and AI-powered solutions;
• Build lightweight internal applications that improve productivity and simplify daily work;
• Use AI coding assistants and AI-native workflows to accelerate delivery and experimentation;
• Continuously iterate on solutions based on real user feedback and adoption;
• Support teams in improving processes rather than simply digitising existing inefficiencies;
• Collaborate with Finance, HR, Commercial and leadership teams on business-critical initiatives;
• Balance speed and quality by making pragmatic engineering decisions that keep momentum high;
• Introduce smarter workflows through automation, AI agents and connected internal tooling;
• Help shape how AI is adopted responsibly and practically across the organisation;
• Contribute ideas, patterns and improvements that help teams move faster and work more effectively.

Who you are

You are someone who enjoys solving problems in messy real-world environments. You probably combine technical curiosity with strong communication skills and a genuine interest in how businesses operate. You do not need perfect requirements or fully defined roadmaps to get started. Instead, you ask questions, explore possibilities and move towards solutions quickly. You are energised by learning new things and comfortable adapting as technology evolves. AI does not intimidate you. You see it as a practical tool that helps you think faster, build faster and create more impact.

You enjoy collaboration and are comfortable working closely with stakeholders who are not technical. You know how to explain ideas clearly, challenge assumptions constructively and keep momentum without overcomplicating things. Most importantly, you care about outcomes. You like shipping useful solutions, seeing people adopt them and improving them over time based on what works in practice.

Why this role stands out

This is not a traditional engineering role focused purely on technical implementation. You will operate close to decision-makers, influence how teams work and help shape the practical adoption of AI across an international organisation. The role combines engineering, consulting, problem-solving and business collaboration in a way that offers broad exposure and visible impact.

If you enjoy fast-moving environments, practical innovation and building solutions that people genuinely use, this role offers the opportunity to have a direct influence on how modern AI capabilities create value inside a global business.

Our environment is centred around Databricks, modern AI tooling and lightweight application development, but deep specialisation in every technology is not required from day one.

You will likely feel comfortable here if you have experience or interest in areas such as:

• Building internal tools, automations or operational applications;
• Working with Python or modern lightweight application frameworks;
• Using AI coding assistants or agent-based development workflows;
• Exploring AI agents, orchestration workflows or prompt-driven systems;
• Databricks environments and concepts such as notebooks, jobs or governed data access;
• Workflow automation platforms like Microsoft Power Automate;
• Rapid application tooling such as Streamlit, FastAPI, Gradio or similar technologies;
• Monitoring and observability concepts using tools like Grafana;
• Modern frontend technologies for specific use cases, including React or Next.js;

What matters most is your ability to learn quickly, understand concepts and apply technology pragmatically in business environments.

Mobility budget or Lease car: No

Brand: HeadFirst Group