Senior AI Engineer

ABOUT THE COMPANY

SWORD Group, being a leader in IT software solutions and services, has 4000 + IT/Digital & Software specialists present over 5 continents to accompany you in the growth of your organization in the digital age. SWORD is present in the MEA region through its offices in UAE, KSA, Cyprus, and Lebanon. As a leader in technological and digital transformation, SWORD Group has since the year 2000 acquired a solid reputation in software solutions and in complex IT & business project management. With SWORD you have the guarantee of strong close and qualified local commitment, the aim of which is to automate your business processes and optimize/maximize the usage of business data.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Senior AI Engineer delivers AI solutions that work in production and matter to the business. We are not looking for a pure technician: this role combines hands-on engineering with project delivery, vendor management and the judgement to know when a solution is good enough to ship. The role is based on-site in Abu Dhabi.

SOFT SKILLS & BEHAVIORS

These behaviors weigh as much as technical skills in our selection. The role sits at the interface between vendors, internal departments and leadership, and succeeds only if it keeps them working together.

• Bridge-builder: connects vendors, business departments, IT, InfoSec, procurement and leadership; translates between technical and business language and gets everyone aligned on one plan.
• Stakeholder management: builds trust with department heads and end users, manages expectations and handles disagreement without escalation.
• Challenger mindset: questions the status quo, vendor proposals and internal assumptions, constructively and with facts.
• Resilience: stays steady under pressure, shifting priorities and pushback; absorbs setbacks, slow approvals and failed pilots without losing momentum.
• Pragmatism: done beats perfect. Ships a working solution, measures it, improves it, and knows when to stop polishing and move on.
• Clear communication: explains trade-offs simply to non-technical audiences and senior management, in writing and in person.
• Ownership: takes a solution from idea to production and stays accountable for how it performs.
• Business sense: asks what problem is worth solving before choosing a model.
• Fluent English required; Arabic is a plus.

ABOUT THE TEAM AND THE MISSION

You will join a small, hands-on AI team that owns the organization's AI roadmap end to end: use-case discovery, delivery, governance and adoption.

Our work spans pensions administration, investment operations and corporate functions. Current initiatives include agentic assistants deployed in Microsoft Teams, document intelligence, data reconciliation automation and an AI governance framework. Our stack is Microsoft-first (Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, M365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Power Platform); UAE sovereign cloud is used only where hosted open-weight models are required. Security, data residency and regulatory compliance are non negotiable.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Solution design and delivery

• Design and build end-to-end AI solutions: LLM applications, RAG pipelines, multi-agent workflows and ML models, from prototype to production.
• Translate business problems from pensions, investments and support functions into scoped technical solutions with measurable outcomes.
• Integrate AI services with enterprise systems (ERP, document repositories, Microsoft 365, internal APIs).

Project delivery

• Run AI projects end to end: scope, plan, milestones, budget, risks and stakeholder reporting.
• Define the MVP and success criteria upfront, then ship iteratively instead of perfecting in isolation.
• Coordinate business owners, IT, InfoSec and procurement to keep projects moving.

Vendor management

• Lead the technical evaluation of vendors and integrators: proposals, demos, PoCs and pricing.
• Challenge vendor claims, estimates and roadmaps; push back on over-engineered or overpriced solutions.
• Hold vendors accountable for delivery, quality and knowledge transfer to the internal team.

Engineering and operations (LLMOps / MLOps)

• Build robust pipelines for data ingestion, embedding, retrieval, evaluation and deployment.
• Implement CI/CD, monitoring, logging, cost tracking and automated evaluation of model quality (accuracy, hallucination, latency).
• Own production reliability of deployed agents and models, including incident handling and continuous improvement.

Governance, security and compliance

• Apply the organization's AI governance framework: risk assessment, human-in-the loop design, access control and audit trails.
• Ensure solutions meet data residency, information security and UAE regulatory requirements.
• Contribute to security reviews of AI vendors and third-party models.

Technical leadership

• Set engineering standards, reusable components and reference architectures for the AI team.
• Mentor junior engineers and data scientists through code reviews and pairing.
• Evaluate new models, platforms and vendors, and present clear recommendations to leadership.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Mathematics, Engineering or a related field.
• 6+ years in software, data or ML engineering, including at least 2 years building and deploying LLM-based applications.
• Proven track record of shipping AI solutions to production in an enterprise environment, not only proofs of concept.
• Strong hands-on experience with the Microsoft AI stack (Azure AI Foundry / Azure OpenAI, Copilot Studio, Power Platform).
• Demonstrated project management experience: has led AI or digital projects end to end, on time and within budget.
• Hands-on experience managing and challenging technology vendors and system integrators, from RFP and evaluation through delivery.
• Experience in regulated industries (financial services, pensions, insurance, government) is a strong plus.
• Certifications are a plus: Azure AI Engineer Associate, Azure Solutions Architect, PMP, PRINCE2 or Agile

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Required Depth on the below Microsoft stack matters more than breadth across frameworks:

Microsoft AI Stack

Must-have

• Azure AI Foundry
• Azure OpenAI
• Azure AI Search
• Copilot Studio
• Power Automate

Nice-to-have

• M365 Copilot extensibility
• Microsoft Graph
• Microsoft Fabric

GenAI & LLMs

Must-have

• Prompt engineering
• RAG
• Embeddings
• Tool calling
• Agents using Semantic Kernel or Microsoft Agent Framework

Nice-to-have

• Fine-tuning
• Open-weight model hosting
• Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Programming

Must-have

• Python, production-quality
• SQL
• REST APIs
• Nice-to-have C#
• TypeScript

Machine Learning

Must-have

• Classical ML
• scikit-learn
• XGBoost
• Evaluation methodology
• Nice-to-have Time series
• Azure AI Document Intelligence

MLOps / DevOps

Must-have

• Azure DevOps or GitHub
• CI/CD
• Docker
• Monitoring and evaluation of LLM applications

Nice-to-have

• Bicep or Terraform
• AKS
• MLflow

Data

Must-have

• Data pipelines
• Data quality
• Structured and unstructured data

Nice-to-have

• Databricks
• Oracle

Security

Must-have

• Entra ID
• Key Vault
• Prompt-injection mitigation

Nice-to-have

• AI red-teaming
• Microsoft Purview

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Why working at SWORD ?

• Enjoy a Hybrid or Remote Work Environment
• Being part of a Dynamic and Supportive Environment focused on Employee Wellness
• Gain International Exposure and Multicultural Experience
• Learn from a Diversified Team of experts across the world
• Participate in major projects with industry leaders
• Have the possibility to relocate to a regional office within SWORD Group