Role Overview
We are hiring an AI Engineering Lead for the Multi-Tech Agentic Engineering team to lead the technical direction, engineering discipline, and delivery velocity of IAG’s next generation of agentic AI products. This is a hands‑on senior technical leadership role. The successful candidate will be the technical authority across agent frameworks, orchestration patterns, memory design, and guardrails. The role reports to the Group Head of Technology and works within the product oversight of the Group Head of Cognitive Automation.
The position involves shaping the multi‑vendor agent ecosystem across OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft Azure, LangGraph, AutoGen, and other emerging frameworks. The Engineer will operate in a matrix environment, leading both internal engineering teams and partner‑led delivery teams across multiple airlines, central teams, external partners, and offshore/nearshore units.
Responsibilities
- Technical Ownership:
Set the technical strategy for IAG’s agentic architecture, including orchestration patterns, tool integration, memory, evaluation, and runtime governance.
Develop and drive adoption of reusable agent components that accelerate delivery across all operating companies.
Make architecture decisions on model selection, GraphRAG, RAG optimisation, LangGraph patterns, and model cost modelling.
- Agentic Engineering Leadership:
Lead and mentor a small multi‑disciplinary technical team building enterprise‑grade AI agents integrated with complex airline systems, working across London and Barcelona.
Drive a culture of excellence by developing talent, managing performance rigorously, and shaping a team that delivers at elite levels.
Provide engineering leadership across internal teams and external technology partners, ensuring consistency of standards and delivery quality.
Establish technical best practices for OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, LangGraph, AutoGen, and other agent frameworks.
Implement strong engineering discipline, including observability, safety, automated evaluation, behavioural testing, and continuous improvement.
- Matrix and Partner Leadership:
Operate effectively in a matrix environment spanning Group, OpCos, cloud, data, and security teams.
Coordinate and influence multiple delivery streams to ensure alignment, technical coherence, and consistent engineering standards.
Manage and guide external partners, ensuring work meets IAG’s quality, cost, and velocity expectations.
- Platform and Architecture Leadership:
Shape the Group’s lightweight GenAI abstraction layer, enabling fast, predictable, and secure route‑to‑live.
Own agile technical governance with auditable decisions, clear architecture documentation, and rapid escalation of risks.
Maintain a sharp external radar on AI evolution and benchmark vendor capabilities, reliability, and cost.
- Product and Delivery Impact:
Work with product leads to ensure technical designs deliver genuine, measurable EBIT impact.
Identify quick‑start approaches that left‑shift value during discovery.
Build a developer experience that encourages rapid adoption of AI components across the Group.
- Stakeholder Influence:
Build strong relationships across all airlines and influence at CDIO‑1 level.
Represent the AI engineering strategy to the Group CTO, CDAO, CISO, and cloud/data platform leaders.
Support Group‑wide AI upskilling through contributions to the AI Academy curriculum.
- Travel:
Ability to travel internally (within Europe) on a weekly basis, where required, to work with the team and stakeholders.
Qualifications, Experience and Qualities
- 15+ years of engineering leadership with proven experience delivering complex software systems at scale.
- Direct experience architecting and delivering production AI agents with measurable business impact.
- Deep technical command of the OpenAI ecosystem, including model orchestration, tool calling, evaluation, and runtime optimisation.
- Strong experience with Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, and at least one other agent framework such as LangGraph or AutoGen.
- Proven ability to lead both internal engineering teams and external partner teams to consistent, high‑quality outcomes.
- Strong track record operating in a matrix environment, influencing without direct authority and aligning diverse stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to integrate LLM‑based agents with enterprise systems, APIs, RPA, orchestration platforms and internal tools.
- Strong grounding in DevSecOps, cloud‑native architecture, observability and CI/CD.
- Ability to translate complex technical considerations into simple, concise narratives for senior executives.
- Evidence of succeeding in fast‑paced, ambiguous, high‑stakes environments.
- Nice‑to‑haves: Airline or travel industry experience; experience building reusable platform components adopted across multiple business units; experience with model hosting, fine‑tuning, distillation or model evaluation frameworks; experience with globally distributed teams and multi‑vendor delivery ecosystems.
- We are looking for someone who thrives at the intersection of architecture, engineering craft, and delivery, cuts through fog quickly, favours practical, high‑value solutions, stays ahead of AI evolution, inspires senior engineers, and communicates with clarity and confidence.
Benefits
- Opportunity to enjoy a challenging career in a fast‑moving environment.
- Work in a multi‑cultural setting with great offices in many locations.
- Support for work/life balance, including health insurance, pension, and performance bonuses.
- Equal opportunities employment; all qualified applicants receive consideration without regard to protected characteristics.
Equal Opportunity Employment
We are an equal opportunities employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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