Job description
Description

As an AI/ML Engineer within the AI Center of Excellence (CoE) team, you will be at the cutting edge of merging advanced AI techniques with the Nationwide’s distinctive data assets to optimize business decisions and automate processes. This role offers the chance to expand the frontiers of AI applications in financial services by leveraging the latest innovations in Natural Language Processing and statistical machine learning.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at our Central London/ If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.
If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.

What you’ll be doing

You will be instrumental in creating products that enhance efficiency, aid experts in prioritizing tasks, and improve decision-making. Our growing suite of AI-powered products and services presents substantial opportunities for the reuse of foundational components through thoughtfully designed libraries and services that can be applied team-wide. This position uniquely blends scientific research with software engineering, requiring a comprehensive understanding of both domains. You will have opportunity to work on the variety of projects spanning across Machine learning and Generative AI.

About you
• Designing AI applications using RAG, Agentic and other evolving frameworks. Ability to LLM fine-tuning, including preparation of training sets from internal data.
• Expert understanding of Prompt engineering approaches, query retrieval strategies, and other relevant AI application components.
• Develop highly scalable classifiers and tools leveraging machine learning, time series predictive methods, and deep learning models.
• Collaborate with software engineers and data engineers to deploy machine learning models and Generative AI applications into production environments using ML workflows.
• Create and deliver reusable technical assets that help to accelerate the adoption of generative AI
• Experience in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) with a focus on Large Language Models (LLMs), and metrics for assessing fairness, transparency, and interpretability in the complex AI models.
• Interact with customers directly to understand the business problem, help and aid them in implementation of generative AI solutions, deliver briefing and deep dive sessions to customers and guide customer on adoption patterns and paths for generative AI .

Qualifications:
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
• Proven knowledge of Generative AI and hands-on experience of building applications with large foundation models
• Solid understanding of fundamentals of statistics, optimization and ML theory. Familiarity with popular deep learning architectures (transformers, autoencoders, VAE, etc.)

Our Customer First behaviours are all about putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together. You can strengthen your application by showing the behaviours that resonate with you, and how you might have already demonstrated these.
• Say it straight - This is about being honest and direct with good intent and saying what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand.
• Push for better - This is about aiming high and constantly looking for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members.
• Get it done - This is about prioritising what will have the greatest impact, being decisive and taking accountability for delivering on the end-to-end outcome.

We know applying for jobs can sometimes feel like you’re sending an application into a black hole. We review each application individually. So, it’s a good idea to call out your most relevant experience on your application to give yourself the best chance.

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:
• A personal pension – if you put in 7% of your salary, we’ll top up by a further 16%
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year
• Life assurance worth 8x your salary
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Wellhub – Access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• Access to an annual performance related bonus
• Access to training to help you develop and progress your career
• 25 days holiday, pro rata

What makes us different

Nationwide is the world’s largest building society. With over 15 million customers, we have a relationship with almost a quarter of the UK’s population. We’ve got the scale to compete with the big banks, but we’re not a bank.

As a building society, we’re owned by our members – that’s our customers who have their current account, mortgage or savings with us. It means we can do things differently to deliver our Purpose – Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society.

When you work at Nationwide, you can experience that difference for yourself. You’ll be part of a high-performing, purpose-driven organisation that offers rewarding career experiences and a highly competitive range of benefits to match. You’ll also be joining us at an important time as we seek to reach more and more people in the UK. We want everyone in the UK to know that they don’t have to bank with a bank. They can choose a modern mutual instead.

What to do next

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us. We’d also like to see a portfolio of some of your work.

We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application. If it’s already been defined please provide an overview of the assessment process and a timeline of when assessments will be.

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