AI Solutions Engineer

The department

The IT department has approximately 60 staff globally, located in London, Paris, Piraeus, Dubai, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Melbourne, Perth, Singapore, and Sydney.

HFW’s Information Technology team’s vision is to deliver and support innovative technology that enables client service excellence, globally.

The role

The AI Solutions Engineer will play a crucial role in supporting the development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions across the firm. This role will play a key part in designing, building, and maintaining trusted AI that enhances legal service delivery, knowledge management, and operational efficiency.

The role offers the opportunity to influence and shape the use of AI across HFW.

This is a hands on technical role, working closely with lawyers, knowledge professionals and business services teams to deliver and support secure and scalable AI solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build and support AI solutions to support legal work, including legal research, document analysis, contract review, summarisation, and due diligence.
• Collaborate with lawyers, knowledge teams and other stakeholders to identify high‑value use cases and integrate agentic AI into legal workflows and core systems.
• Design, build and support AI solutions to improve and automate mid and back-office services, e.g. client and matter onboarding, business development and IT support.
• Translate legal and business requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Support user testing, feedback, and iterative improvement to drive adoption across the firm.
• Design AI systems with data privacy, security, and confidentiality by default.
• Ensure AI outputs are explainable, auditable, and appropriate for legal and professional use.
• Work with Risk, Compliance, and IT Security teams to ensure adherence to internal policies and external regulatory requirements.
• Develop reusable AI components that can be deployed across multiple jurisdictions and offices.
• Contribute to firm‑wide standards, best practices, and governance for AI development.
• Assess third‑party AI tools and platforms, including legal‑tech solutions. Build proofs of concept and perform technical evaluations to support build‑versus‑buy decisions.
• Stay informed on AI developments and assess their applicability to the firm’s needs.
• Support the firm’s broader AI and innovation strategy through technical expertise.
• Contribute to internal knowledge‑sharing, documentation, and upskilling initiatives.
• Serve as a technical adviser on emerging AI capabilities, risks and best practices.

Key skills and experience required

• Experience of working in a legal or comparable professional services organisation would be beneficial but not essential.
• Ability to combine AI platform expertise with software development skills to build scalable, secure and maintainable solutions.
• Proficiency with Microsoft technologies including Copilot Studio, Azure DevOps and Azure AI Foundry
• Working knowledge and experience in development, ideally in Python (additional languages such as JavaScript are an advantage).
• Experience building and deploying AI or machine learning solutions in production environments.
• Solid understanding of:
  • Machine learning fundamentals
  • Natural language processing (NLP)
  • Large Language Models (LLMs) and prompt engineering
• Working experience of designing prompts, skills, grounding strategies, and knowledge integrations to ensure reliable AI responses.
• Experience evaluating and integrating third‑party AI tools and platforms.
• Clear understanding of data protection principles and other AI related regulatory frameworks, including GDPR and EU AI Act.
• Awareness of secure system design, access controls, and audit requirements.
• Able to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Pragmatic, risk‑aware, and focused on delivering reliable solutions.
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills.
• Methodical and thorough, showing good attention to detail.
• Professional manner with the ability to work under pressure and prioritise effectively.
• Experience of working effectively across geographies, cultures, teams and functions with an ability to operate effectively in a complex environment.

Additional information

Kindly note, this job description is not contractual. It will be reviewed periodically and may be amended or altered to meet the needs of the firm.

HFW aims to ensure equality of opportunity, and we are actively working towards improving the diversity of our staff. All applications will be considered only on merit and the applicant’s suitability to meet the requirements of the role.

HFW collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants to manage its recruitment process. The firm is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations. For information on how the firm will process your data, please see our Privacy Notice, in the section “What we collect and how we use it”.