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Lead AI Engineer

Swap

Swap

Software Engineering, Data Science
London, UK
Posted on Mar 13, 2026

Location

London

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Hybrid

Department

Tech

Swap is the infrastructure behind modern agentic commerce. The only AI-native platform connecting backend operations with a forward-thinking storefront experience.

Built for brands that want to sell anything - anywhere, Swap centralizes global operations, powers intelligent workflows, and unlocks margin-protecting decisions with real-time data and capability. Our products span cross-border, tax, returns, demand planning, and our next-generation agentic storefront, giving merchants full transparency and the ability to act with confidence.

At Swap, we’re building a culture that values clarity, creativity, and shared ownership as we redefine how global commerce works.

About the Role

We are seeking a Lead AI Engineer generalist to build robust, scalable conversational and autonomous AI agents in e-commerce. You will own large parts of the architecture and technical direction of our agent platform, building production-ready systems that handle high-volume agent workloads using modern JavaScript & Python frameworks. This is a lead-level role responsible for setting engineering standards, shaping platform architecture, and mentoring other engineers while working closely with product and design to bring intelligent agent experiences to life.

Key Responsibilities

  • Own Agent Platform Architecture: Design and evolve distributed systems for multi-agent orchestration using JavaScript AI frameworks (Node, NestJS), serverless compute platforms, and advanced state management. Define best practices for reliability, scalability, and extensibility.

  • Build Agent Infrastructure: Develop production-grade agent runtimes, orchestration layers, workflow engines, and tool integrations. Ensure systems support high concurrency, real-time interaction, and seamless backend integration.

  • Agent Observability & Quality: Implement comprehensive tracing, monitoring, and structured logging for real-time performance tracking and conversation quality evaluation. Build interactive dashboards and reporting interfaces for stakeholders.

  • Agent Communication & Workflows: Implement multi agent harnesses, cloud endpoints, and real-time communication systems.

  • Performance & Platform Reliability: Implement advanced caching strategies, high-availability patterns (99.9%+ uptime), CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code. Lead improvements in system performance, cost efficiency, and developer experience.

  • Technical Leadership: Set engineering standards for the agent platform. Conduct architectural reviews, mentor engineers, contribute to hiring, and partner cross-functionally to align technical decisions with product vision.

What We’d Like to See

  • Experience: 6+ years in software engineering, with 1+ years in AI/ML platform engineering focused on designing and scaling production agent systems or high-traffic conversational AI platforms.

  • AI Frameworks: Expert experience with JavaScript-based AI agent frameworks. Deep understanding of agent orchestration, state management, tool usage patterns, memory systems, and conversational AI design.

  • Full Stack JavaScript/TypeScript: Advanced Node.js/TypeScript with distributed systems, asynchronous programming, event-driven architecture, and multi-agent protocols. Strong experience building modern frontend applications for real-time web interfaces.

  • Observability & Reliability: Production experience with observability frameworks, structured logging, APM solutions, and evaluation pipelines. Experience building internal analytics dashboards and developer tooling.

  • Cloud & Infrastructure: Advanced experience with cloud AI services, vector databases, serverless computing, infrastructure automation, and modern deployment patterns for JavaScript applications.

  • Leadership: Demonstrated experience leading technical initiatives, driving architecture decisions, mentoring engineers, and influencing cross-functional teams.

Benefits:

  • Competitive base salary

  • Stock options in a high-growth startup

  • Competitive PTO with public holidays additional

  • Private Health

  • Pension

  • Wellness benefits

  • Breakfast Mondays

Diversity & Equal Opportunities:

We embrace diversity and equality in a serious way. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, skills, and views. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. Creating a culture of equality isn't just the right thing to do; it's also the smart thing.