Overview

The AI / LLM Engineer is the person who turns promising model behaviour into a dependable product feature. They live at the intersection of applied research and production engineering, comfortable moving between a notebook, a service, and a code review. They know when to reach for an API and when to get closer to the weights.

At Radical, every LLM Engineer has cleared the APAC assessment before they reach a shortlist. That means you are not just hiring for the prompt, the eval, and the vector store — you are hiring for the judgement to know when a model is good enough to ship and when it is not, and the communication skills to make that call stick.

Best fits are product teams working on AI-native features where reliability, cost, and user trust are all on the table at the same time. Scale-ups in the 30–300 headcount range looking to move from prototype to production. Organisations that want someone who takes technical ownership, not just technical input.

01·What this role does

What this role does

01
Designs and ships LLM-powered features end to end, from prototype to production
02
Implements retrieval, grounding, and evaluation pipelines around foundation models
03
Fine-tunes, distils, or adapts models when the cost or quality case is there
04
Writes robust evals so regressions are caught before customers feel them
05
Partners with product, data, and platform engineers on latency, cost, and safety

02·Skills & experience

Skills and experience we look for

Strong Python and typed JavaScript / TypeScript on the service side

Hands-on with at least one major model provider SDK (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, open weights)

Experience with RAG, vector search, and long-context strategies

Comfort with eval frameworks and systematic prompt iteration

A working mental model of cost, latency, and failure modes in production

03·How you engage

Typical engagement types

Permanent

Full-time hire, embedded in the client team from day one. Works across roadmap, architecture, and day-to-day delivery. The right choice when LLM engineering is a core and ongoing function, not a one-off project.

Interim

Fixed-term engagement of three to six months to unblock a roadmap, validate a technical bet, or cover a critical gap. Radicals are productive from week one and hand over cleanly at the end.

Secondment

A Radical works embedded in your team under a shared engagement structure. You get the continuity of an embedded hire with the institutional knowledge and standards of the Radical network behind them.

04·Why Radical

The APAC difference

Every Radical clears the APAC assessment before the shortlist.

APAC is our framework for evaluating the human qualities that make great AI professionals: Adaptability, Personality, Awareness, Connection. You are hiring for judgement, not only for a CV. Read the full method and findings in our research paper.

The best AI professionals are not busy on LinkedIn Open To Work. They are already building. We know them, and we know how to reach them, because we spend time with them.

Get in touch

Tell us what you need in a LLM Engineer.

We respond within 24 hours, in person. Use the button below.

Hire a Radical LLM Engineer See all roles

AI Engineer / LLM Engineer.

Overview

What this role does

Skills and experience we look for

Typical engagement types