AI Software Engineer KTP Associate - 24 months Fixed Term

Birmingham City University is looking to appoint a high calibre graduate as an AI Software Engineer (KTP Associate) to deliver an exciting 24-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership with BCU's Department of Computer Science within the School of Architecture, Built Environment, Computing and Engineering (ABCE) and PBL Care Limited.

Based primarily at PBL Care in Birmingham, you will work with leading BCU academics and PBL's operational team to develop and embed an AI-enabled platform that can transform how social-care services are planned, coordinated and monitored.

This Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) is co-funded by a grant from Innovate UK and PBL Care Limited. It is therefore essential you understand the fundamentals of how the KTP collaboration between a UK business and a University works to deliver benefits for each (the company, the university, and the graduate).

The project will develop SMARTPBL, an operational-intelligence platform that integrates with PBL's existing systems to improve workforce planning, care continuity, regulatory compliance and staff satisfaction. Its three core innovations are an intelligent geospatial carer-matching engine, a workforce retention and attrition-risk predictive model, and a domain-adapted NLP/LLM pipeline for converting care notes into structured and auditable intelligence.

This is an excellent opportunity for a software/AI professional who wants to take ownership of a substantial real-world innovation project, combining applied AI, data engineering, software development, cybersecurity, user-centred design and organisational change in a regulated care environment.

PBL Care Limited is a CQC-regulated social-care provider delivering adult domiciliary care, children's homecare, NHS/ICB-commissioned services and supported-living provision across the West Midlands. PBL Care is seeking to strengthen its digital and analytical capability so it can scale safely, improve workforce stability, strengthen regulatory performance and deliver consistently high-quality care.

The Associate will be supervised and mentored by BCU's Knowledge Base Lead and Academic Supervisors and by PBL's Company Supervisor. The successful candidate will have full access to Birmingham City University's resources such as offices, labs, and library to complete the KTP project.

The role requires close collaboration with senior management, care coordinators, carers, technical staff and BCU academics, with a strong emphasis on knowledge transfer and embedding sustainable in-house capability.

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

- Lead requirements elicitation, feasibility analysis and technical planning for SMARTPBL
- Design the secure, modular platform architecture, data layer, APIs, dashboards and user interfaces
- Develop the geospatial intelligent matching and dynamic replanning capability
- Develop ML models for workforce retention and attrition-risk prediction
- Develop and validate a domain-adapted NLP/LLM pipeline for care notes and risk/quality intelligence
- Implement cybersecurity, access control, secure communications and GDPR-aligned data-protection measures
- Build and integrate the web and mobile solution with PBL's existing systems and cloud/data services
- Plan and conduct unit, integration, security and user-acceptance testing and support production deployment
- Train and mentor PBL staff, produce technical/user/helpdesk documentation, and embed sustainable internal capability
- Support project reporting, impact evaluation, publications, dissemination and commercial exploitation planning

Essential Skills and Experience:

- Strong software-development skills and experience building data-driven systems
- Applied machine-learning and data-analytics capability, including predictive modelling and/or optimisation
- Knowledge or experience of NLP/LLMs and unstructured-text processing
- Experience with databases, APIs and systems integration
- Experience of cloud-hosted platforms or application architectures
- Understanding of cybersecurity, access control, secure communications and data-protection principles
- Web and/or mobile application development experience
- Excellent communication, stakeholder-engagement, problem-solving and project-delivery skills
- Ability to work independently, manage change, take ownership of deliverables and operate effectively in a regulated environment

Desirable Skills and Experience:

- Approximately two years' relevant software-development/applied-AI experience
- Experience integrating or adapting open-source LLMs and practical NLP solutions
- Experience of GIS/routing/scheduling optimisation or workforce analytics
- Experience of Azure, AWS or Google Cloud
- Experience in social care, healthcare, digital health or another regulated/sensitive-data sector
- Knowledge of explainable AI, human-in-the-loop approaches, fairness/bias monitoring and responsible AI
- Academic acumen to contribute to technical reports, publications, conference outputs and training materials

Education: At least a 2:1 degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Software Engineering or a closely related discipline. A relevant Master's degree is advantageous.

Personal Skills:

- Enthusiastic, self-motivated and able to take a proactive role in delivering the proposal's work plan successfully
- Practical interpersonal skills to establish good working relationships with colleagues, stakeholders, and industrial partners
- Excellent communication skills to express ideas adequately and articulate complicated matters between the academics and the company project team members either orally or in writing
- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and computational skills, along with being adept at applying knowledge to commercial projects, driving value and making an impact where possible
- Strong project management skills

Benefits:

The AI Software Engineer KTP Associate will have access to a personal development budget of £4,000 to upskill during the project, alongside the wider KTP Associate training programme.

The successful candidate will be required to undergo an Enhanced DBS check with barred list checks for both children and adults in accordance with the safeguarding requirements of PBL Care.