AI Engineering Lead

Digital Futures is seeking an AI Engineering Lead who will be responsible for leading the design, build and operation of production‑grade AI solutions for clients, ensuring they are robust, scalable and secure across cloud and data platforms. The role provides technical leadership to AI and data engineers and sets engineering standards for AI delivery.

Key responsibilities

• Lead end‑to‑end engineering of AI products and platforms (including LLM, ML and automation use cases) from discovery through to production and ongoing optimisation.
• Define and own engineering standards, patterns and best practices for AI services, APIs, data pipelines and MLOps across cloud environments.
• Provide hands‑on technical direction to AI Engineers, ML Engineers and Data Engineers, including code reviews, solution design and troubleshooting.
• Collaborate with architects, product owners and client stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical designs.
• Ensure solutions meet non‑functional requirements including performance, reliability, observability, security and cost‑effectiveness.
• Champion continuous improvement of engineering practices, tooling and automation within and across Expert Teams.

Skills & experience

• Extensive experience delivering AI/ML or data‑intensive systems into production in a consulting, product or enterprise environment.
• Strong software engineering background (e.g. Python, Java, or similar) with experience of modern development practices (CI/CD, testing, DevOps, Git‑based workflows).
• Hands‑on experience with major cloud and data platforms (e.g. AWS, GCP, Azure, Databricks, Snowflake) and associated AI/ML services.
• Familiarity with modern AI tooling (LLM frameworks, vector databases, orchestration/agent frameworks, MLOps tooling).
• Proven track record of leading technical teams, mentoring engineers and influencing technical decisions.
• Understanding of security, data privacy and responsible AI considerations in production systems.

Behaviours & mindset

• Acts as a builder who takes ownership of outcomes, not just code.
• Communicates clearly with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Enjoys mentoring others and raising the overall bar for engineering quality.
• Pragmatic and delivery‑focused, able to balance ideal architecture with real‑world constraints.
• Curious about emerging AI technologies and keen to experiment and learn.

What’s in it for you?

• Tailored professional development plan and upskilling
• Ability to make an impact at Digital Futures while it is in a period of accelerated growth
• Access to our employee benefits, discounts and perks platform
• Pension contributions
• Wellbeing budget
• Competitive salary
• Hybrid working model with required office working days

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