Junior Automation Engineer
Are you an early-career engineer who wants to see the AI and automation solutions you help build actually change how a business runs, from your first conversation with a department through to production and adoption? We are recruiting on behalf of a well-established manufacturer of access automation and security systems, seeking a Junior Automation Engineer to join their R&D team. This is a role for someone starting out in their career who is curious about how businesses operate and wants structured, hands-on exposure to building AI-enabled automation under the guidance of senior engineers.
Responsibilities:
- Work alongside assigned business departments, including Sales, Human Resources, Finance, Technical Support, Production and Marketing, to observe, document and map existing processes under the guidance of a senior engineer
- Assist in identifying, scoping and prioritising opportunities where AI and automation can reduce manual effort, cycle time or error rates within departmental processes
- Build, test and deploy well-defined automation agents and workflows on the company's internal AI platform, following the agreed agent manifest, data classification and approval standards
- Contribute to the development and maintenance of an internal AI platform, including the model gateway, agent runtimes, retrieval services, tool integrations and user access surfaces
- Implement and maintain integrations between the AI platform and business systems such as ERP, CRM, ticketing and knowledge sources, using the shared integration and action layers rather than direct system access
- Assist with the day-to-day operation of the platform by monitoring usage, cost and performance, resolving routine issues and escalating incidents in line with defined procedures
- Prepare and maintain evaluation and regression test sets for deployed automations, and run them before changes are released
- Apply the company's data classification, access control, privacy and audit requirements to every automation built, ensuring restricted information remains within approved boundaries
- Document business processes as they are found, solutions as they are built, and the reasoning behind design decisions, so that knowledge is retained and transferable
- Provide first-line support and hands-on guidance to departmental users of deployed automations, gathering feedback and feeding it back into improvements
- Participate in code reviews, design discussions and knowledge-sharing sessions, actively seeking and acting on feedback from senior engineers
- Maintain awareness of developments in AI models, tooling and automation practice, and share relevant findings with the team
- Communicate progress, risks and blockers clearly and proactively to the responsible manager and to departmental stakeholders
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, information systems, electronic engineering or a related field
- Zero to two years of experience in software development, automation, data engineering or a related discipline; relevant academic, internship or project work will be considered
- Practical exposure to Python and to at least one AI or large language model framework or API, demonstrated through academic, personal or professional project work
- Competent in Python and at least one additional typed programming language (Java, TypeScript, C# or similar); able to write clear, testable and maintainable code
- Working knowledge of version control, relational databases and web APIs
- Understanding of software development methodologies, including Agile and Scrum
- Exposure to Linux, containerisation, cloud or on-premises infrastructure is advantageous
- Exposure to some of the following toolchains is advantageous: LiteLLM, Qdrant, pgvector, Langfuse, Docker and vLLM, or demonstrable equivalents
- Relevant certifications in artificial intelligence, cloud platforms or software development are advantageous
This is an opportunity to join a company committed to product excellence, working closely with R&D management, departmental stakeholders, and IT and security teams, with the support and mentorship to grow quickly as an engineer. If this sounds like the right first step in your engineering career, we would like to hear from you.