AI Engineer

About Abound

We’re redefining consumer lending in the UK, and beyond. Using advanced AI and Open Banking data, we make fair, affordable personal finance available to more people. While traditional lenders rely almost entirely on credit scores, we look at the full financial picture - how much you spend, and what you can afford to repay to build a deeper, more accurate understanding of each customer's unique financial situation.

And we've shown it works at scale. We’ve issued over £1.3bn in loans directly to customers while delivering market-leading credit performance - for every 10 defaults the industry expects, we see only 3. We also reached profitability just 2.5 years after launch.

Backed by £2bn+ of funding from top-tier investors including Citi, GSR Ventures, and Deutsche Bank, we’re recognised as one of Europe’s fastest-growing fintechs (Sifted, CNBC). Now, we’re expanding into new markets and product lines - and we’re looking for ambitious people who want to learn fast, take ownership, and grow with us.

About The Role

We’re looking for a smart, curious, and practical AI Engineer to join our global team in our London office. You’ll work on real-world Generative AI applications, AI agents, and Python-based automation solutions for the consumer lending industry. This role is ideal for someone who wants to turn AI capabilities into measurable business impact, not just build demos. You’ll collaborate closely with our UK and Shenzhen teams to explore, build, evaluate, and integrate AI into customer operations, internal automation, risk workflows, and lending operations.

What You’ll Be Doing

Build Generative AI and AI agent solutions for customer operations, internal automation, and lending operations

Design prompts, workflows, and evaluation processes to make AI systems more reliable and useful

Integrate LLMs with internal tools, APIs, databases, and business systems

Write clean, scalable, and maintainable Python code

Prototype quickly, test ideas, measure impact, and iterate based on real business needs

Collaborate with teams in the UK and Shenzhen to identify high-value AI use cases.

Help improve production reliability through testing, logging, monitoring, fallback handling, and human review where appropriate

Stay up to date with AI trends and propose practical ways to apply them in our business

Who you are

Ideally, 1-3 years of hands-on experience in software engineering, AI, machine learning, automation, or related technical work

Strong Python skills, including API integrations, data processing, async programming, and clean code practices

Solid understanding of Generative AI concepts, including LLMs, embeddings, RAG, prompt engineering, structured outputs, and model limitations

Familiar with prompt design patterns, evaluation methods, and techniques for improving reliability and reducing hallucination

Interested in AI agents and workflow design, including tool calling, task planning, memory, orchestration, and human-in-the-loop systems

Comfortable experimenting quickly, learning new tools, and turning ambiguous business problems into working solutions

Able to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical teams

Ways To Stand Out From The Crowd

Practical LLM applications beyond simple chatbots or demos

Experience with RAG, embeddings, structured outputs, function calling, or agentic workflows

Understand how to evaluate AI outputs and improve reliability over time

Worked with cloud AI platforms such as GCP Vertex AI, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, or similar tools

Experience with financial services, consumer lending, credit risk, collections, or operations automation

Experience with AI coding tools, such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor

What We Value

Strong problem-solving ability

Curiosity about how AI systems work under the hood

Product sense and business awareness

Bias for action and fast learning

Ownership, pragmatism, and attention to quality

What we offer

Everyone owns a piece of the company - equity

Hybrid with 3 days a week in the office

25 days’ holiday a year, plus 8 bank holidays

2 paid volunteering days per year

One month paid sabbatical after 4 years

Employee loan

Free gym membership through WellHub

Team wellness budget to be active together - set up a yoga class, a tennis lesson or go bouldering