Capgemini Invent / Synapse - Sr. Principal Engineer - Physical Agentic AI

About Capgemini Invent

At Capgemini Invent, we believe difference drives change. As inventive transformation consultants, we blend our strategic, creative and scientific capabilities, collaborating closely with clients to deliver cutting-edge solutions. Join us to drive transformation tailored to our client's challenges of today and tomorrow. Informed and validated by science and data. Superpowered by creativity and design. All underpinned by technology created with purpose.

About the Synapse team

Synapse is a product development consultancy working with the world’s most ambitious companies to envision, create, and launch breakthrough AI-powered intelligent products. Sitting at the intersection of hardware, embedded systems, and AI, we specialize in engineering-led innovation that transforms business and unlocks entirely new market categories.

YOUR ROLE

In this role you will play a key role in:

·       Defining and developing next-generation products powered by agentic AI — where LLMs interpret goals, reason across context, and interact with the physical world through sensors, lightweight actuators, and digital APIs.

·       Leading technical architecture for prototypes and MVPs involving embedded AI, vision, audio, and multimodal inputs.

·       Translating real-world customer problems into scalable product concepts and guiding cross-functional engineering teams to bring those to life.

·       Collaborating with designers, hardware engineers, and data specialists to align on technical feasibility, user value, and system integration.

·       Supporting proposal and pitch development for new business opportunities, including thought leadership and client engagement.

YOUR PROFILE

We would love to see a candidate with:

Education & Experience

• Master’s or equivalent specialism in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, or a related technical discipline. PhD a plus.
• 8+ years of experience in AI/ML or intelligent systems development, including around 2 years integrating GenAI or LLMs into physical products.
• Proven success leading end-to-end development of AI-driven physical products or systems in domains like smart devices, industrial automation, or healthcare.

Technical Expertise

• Hands-on experience with GenAI: fine-tuning and deploying LLMs, vLLMs, or multimodal models (e.g. OpenAI, Mistral, LLaVA, RAG). Experience with voice modalities a plus.
• Strong background in Python and ML frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, ONNX.
• Fluency in model compression, distillation, pruning, or quantization.
• Experience designing for and deploying on embedded systems, edge devices, or resource-constrained hardware. Cloud ecosystem (Azure, GCP, AWS) experience a plus.
• Understanding of sensor interfaces (e.g., mic, camera, pressure) and actuator control.
• Knowledge of privacy-preserving AI techniques and secure model deployments.

Leadership & Collaboration

•  Prior experience in roles combining R&D with client-facing activities.
• Ability to translate business or user needs into technical strategies and system design.
• Familiarity with platform thinking and “buy vs build” tradeoffs.
• Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical ideas to clients, technical teams, and executive stakeholders.
• Experience