Group AI Engineer at Salt South Africa

• Think of a global consumer brand that touches millions of people across multiple continents – busy digital teams, lots of member interactions, tons of data, and a real appetite for AI that actually does something, not just sit in a slide deck.
• They’re scaling AI fast, but safely, and building a hands-on engineering function to turn raw ideas into real products people use every day.

What you’ll be doing

• You’re the kind of person who loves building things end-to-end – not just tinkering with models in a notebook, and not just writing APIs in isolation.

In this role, you’ll get to:

• Build AI-powered products from the first whiteboard sketch all the way to “Yep, it’s live and people are using it.”
• Blend software engineering, ML modelling, and data engineering to create genuinely useful tools.
• Work with teams across digital, marketing, operations, and customer experience to understand real problems and craft clear, measurable AI solutions.
• Handle everything from classical ML to LLM-powered systems (RAG, prompt design, adapters, etc.).
• Integrate models into apps, websites, CRM platforms, internal tools – wherever they’re needed.
• Keep things reliable with proper MLOps: monitoring, drift checks, retraining, alerting, and all the good stuff.
• Follow a thoughtful governance framework that keeps AI safe, private, fair, and transparent.
• Share patterns, build reusable components, and level up the organisation’s AI maturity.
• If you enjoy that sweet spot between engineering, ML, and product – you’ll love this.

Who you are
You don’t need the exact same background, but you’ll thrive here if:

• You’ve spent around 6+ years working with ML, data science, or software engineering in an applied, production-focused environment.
• You’ve deployed real models – not just experiments.
• Python and SQL feel like home.
• You’re comfortable with ML frameworks (scikit-learn, LightGBM, PyTorch, TensorFlow etc.).
• You’ve built or used pipelines, containers, registries, tracking tools, or other MLOps tech.
• You’re familiar with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS or GCP – they’re flexible).
• You’re great at translating technical work into plain, friendly language.
• You like experimenting quickly but also care about building things that last.
• You stay curious about new AI developments but lean practical, not hype-driven.
• You understand the importance of data privacy and responsible AI.

Why it’s worth your time
You’ll be building AI that:

• Reaches a global audience
• Solves practical business problems
• Shapes digital experiences
• Lives in production, not in a drawer
• Gives you room to experiment with modern AI tooling
• Lets you contribute to templates, patterns, and ways of working that others will build on