We are seeking an experienced AI & Cloud Engineer to join an advanced R&D team on a contract basis. This role will play a key part in building and scaling AI-driven platforms and services, with a strong focus on cloud-native development, public APIs, and industrial-scale AI deployment. Key Responsibilities Design and build scalable, fault-tolerant cloud-native services on Microsoft Azure. Develop secure, well-documented public APIs and SDKs for both internal and external developer use. Collaborate across teams to deliver end-to-end solutions spanning data pipelines, orchestration, and service APIs. Implement robust security controls to safeguard sensitive data and ensure secure access to AI services. Participate in design and code reviews, contributing to high engineering standards. Mentor junior developers and foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation. Support AI solutions across model deployment, training, and tooling development.AI & Cloud Expertise Hands-on experience working with Large Language Models (LLMs) and balancing performance, cost, and capability. Understanding of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agent orchestration, prompt engineering, and tool calling. Familiarity with AI interoperability standards such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A). Strong knowledge of ML algorithms (regression, classification, clustering, deep learning). Awareness of AI ethics and regulations (e.g., NIST AI RM...