Senior AI Engineer

NCS is a leading AI Tech Services company. With a 15,000-strong team across the Asia Pacific, NCS scales its platforms and capabilities to provide clients with greater agility and AI expertise across a range of Industries. Embracing a strong ecosystem of global partners, NCS transforms technology services delivery combining AI with digital resilience to drive real business impact. NCS is a subsidiary of the Singtel Group.This role sits within NCS AI Central's (AIC) Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) model — the combined capability that takes AI solutions from proof-of-concept through to hardened production systems. As AI Engineer, you design and run rapid experiments on Gen AI models, prompts, and retrieval strategies to give the squad fast, evidence-based answers on model performance — operating primarily within fast-moving FDE engagements (POC/POV, pilot deployments).Note on role boundaries: this role is the FDE-focused counterpart to the practice's AI/LLM Specialist role. AI Engineer runs rapid experimentation and prototyping during POC/POV to give the squad fast, evidence-based answers; AI/LLM Specialist owns the deeper evaluation harness design, prompt/fine-tuning discipline, and production-quality rigor once an engagement scales. The two roles work together across the lifecycle rather than duplicating each other. This role is also distinct from Data Scientist, who applies classical statistical/ML methods and builds the quantitative baseline that any Gen AI solution must beat.What will you do?Experimentation & EvaluationUnderstand the business problem, POC objectives, and evaluation metrics.Design experiments to test different model configurations, prompts, or retrieval strategies.Analyse Gen AI outputs for quality, accuracy, and alignment with requirements; identify common failure modes (hallucination, bias, irrelevant answers, factual errors).Support SMEs in defining ground truth benchmarks for evaluation.Data Preparation & PipelinesProfile and clean sample datasets for experimentation (lightweight data prep).Build and test simple pipelines for data ingestion, prompt construction, and output evaluation.Gen AI & Agentic TechniquesWork with foundation models via AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, or Azure AI Foundry depending on engagement cloud posture.Apply working knowledge of China-origin models (DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM) as increasingly relevant, cost-effective alternatives.Apply agentic orchestration frameworks such as AWS Strands, LangGraph, or equivalent, for designing and testing multi-step agent workflows.Apply prompt strategies, prompt engineering patterns, and RAG design (chunking, embeddings, retrieval evaluation); support ingesting/vectorising content to knowledge bases.Provide insights and recommendations to improve model performance in quick iterations, including fine-tuning approaches where applicable.FDE & Development/Maintenance CoverageDuring FDE engagements: rapidly test candidate models, prompts, and retrieval strategies, giving the team fast, evidence-based go/no-go signals.During system development & maintenance engagements: support ongoing model/prompt tuning and monitoring as applications move toward production.CollaborationCollaborate with developers on integrating models into the POC workflow, and work closely with PM, devs, and SMEs to refine data and prompts.Partner with the Data Scientist on evaluation methodology where classical statistical baselines are in play, and with the AI/LLM Specialist when an engagement moves toward production-grade evaluation.Document experiments briefly but clearly (hypothesis → result → conclusion).The ideal candidate should possess:6+ years of hands-on experience, including prior ownership of experimentation strategy for complex or ambiguous problem statements. Sets the experimentation approach across multiple engagements and mentors junior AI Engineers.Advises PMs and stakeholders directly on feasibility and experimentation trade-offs; represents technical experimentation findings in client conversationsUnderstanding of Gen AI concepts (tokenization, embeddings, RAG, prompting, evaluation).Familiar with at least one major cloud AI service (AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, or Azure AI Foundry); working knowledge of others a plus.Working knowledge of the China AI model landscape (DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM) a strong plus.Familiarity with agentic orchestration frameworks (AWS Strands, LangGraph, or equivalent), for designing and testing multi-step agent workflows.Ability to do rapid experimentation rather than perfect models.Generative AI Leader or Machine Learning Engineer certification, or equivalent.Exposure to LLMOps practices (model monitoring, versioning) for production transition.Familiarity with model fine-tuning techniques.Exposure to regulated government cloud environments.Basic proficiency in Python and Gen AI tools (e.g., model SDKs, vector DBs).Analytical mindset: can quantify subjective output (accuracy, relevance, readability).Good data wrangling skills to prepare small datasets quickly.LLM Runtime: AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Azure AI Foundry; DeepSeek/Qwen/GLM (China stack)Agentic Frameworks: AWS Strands, LangGraphData & Eval: Model SDKs, vector DBs, pandas/Jupyter-style tooling for experimentationWhy Join NCSBe part of building NCS AI Central's Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) capability from the ground up — shaping how AI is delivered to Singapore's most strategic public and private sector clients.Work across the full AI lifecycle, from rapid POC/POV innovation through to production-scale operations, with exposure to Healthcare, Transport, GovTech, and other lighthouse domains.Access to NCS's productised AI asset suite and AI Factory, so you build on hardened components rather than starting from zero each time.Competitive compensation and strong professional development support, including NCS DOJO training and certification pathways.We are driven by our AEIOU beliefs—Adventure, Excellence, Integrity, Ownership, and Unity—and we seek individuals who embody these values in both their professional and personal lives. We are committed to our Impact: Valuing our clients, Growing our people, and Creating our future.Together, we make the extraordinary happen.Learn more about us at ncs.co and visit our LinkedIn career site.