AI Engineering Product Manager

About Us

We are part of International Airlines Group (IAG), one of the world's leading airline groups and owner of some of the biggest brands in the sky.

IAG Transform provides creative and innovative solutions to drive sustainable transformation by delivering procurement and airline services, as well as group-wide systems across IAG. Each operating company benefits from the Transform centralised model, driving efficiencies, automation, and economies of scale.

Purpose of the role

We are hiring a AI Engineering Product Manager for our 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. You must have real experience leading teams that build production-grade AI agents, not just theoretical experiments or hackathon projects. You will be the technical authority across agent frameworks, orchestration patterns, memory design and guardrails.

You will report to the Group Head of Technology and work within the product oversight of the Group Head of Cognitive Automation. You will shape how we build, scale and operate a multi-vendor agent ecosystem across OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft Azure, LangGraph, AutoGen and other emerging frameworks.

You will also lead in a matrix environment, working across multiple airlines, central teams, external partners and offshore/nearshore engineering units. You must be comfortable directing both internal engineering teams and partner-led delivery teams, maintaining consistent quality and velocity across all.

Your responsibilities

What You Will LeadTechnical Ownership

• Set the technical strategy for IAG's agentic architecture, including orchestration patterns, tool integration, memory, evaluation and runtime governance.
• Create and drive adoption of reusable agent components that accelerate delivery across all operating companies.
• Make sound 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 level
• 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.

Your skills, experience and qualifications

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.
• Ability to travel internally (within Europe) on a weekly basis, where required, to work with the team and stakeholders.
  

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.
  

You are likely a great fit if you

• Thrive at the intersection of architecture, engineering craft and delivery.
• Cut through fog quickly and favour practical, high-value solutions.
• Stay ahead of AI evolution and separate hype from substance instantly.
• Inspire and challenge senior engineers while maintaining strong engineering discipline.
• Communicate with clarity, confidence and zero waffle.

What we offer

• The chance to enjoy a challenging career in an exciting, fast-moving environment in a dynamic industry.
• The opportunity to work in a multi-cultural environment with great offices in many locations. We support our people in maintaining work/life balance, as well as providing the many benefits one would expect from a global organisation, including health insurance, pension and performance bonuses.

We are an equal opportunities employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law