Head of AI & Automation Engineering in Birmingham

Job Type: Permanent

Location:Hybrid: based at any of our UK officesBirmingham, London, Telford, Edinburghwithtimespent working in the office and at home

Flexible working:All roles are open to part‑time, job‑share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process.You can read more aboutflexible workinghere.

Closing Date:15thOctober

Salary and benefits:from £120,000 (dependantupon experience) plus an indicative bonus range of 30–60%, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more.

Who are we?

We’re Standard Life,a retirement specialistfocused entirely on retirement savings and income.We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, andfor more than 200 years,we’vebeen helpingour customersplan and prepare for their financial futures.

Life today is increasingly complicated,uncertainand unpredictable. People move through different careers, face unexpectedmomentsand navigate important choices.We offer our colleagues flexibility, trust and benefits that work for whatever life brings. In return we expect curiosity, connection,accountabilityandhigh standards.We make room for what matters - so you can bring your best, every day.

The role

This is a senior leadership role at the centre of ourPensions & SavingsAI and automation ambition. You will build and lead an engineering practice that takes opportunities from idea through to production, creating reusable patterns, strong engineeringstandardsand safe routes to scale. You will work with business, technology, data,riskand change leaders to ensure AI and automation solve the right problems and deliver sustainable value. You will have the opportunity to shape the engineering practice from an early stage and to develop the people in it, including the skills and career pathways that let engineers grow as the practice grow. The balance of the role:This is not a purely strategic post. The successful candidate will be comfortable moving between executive-level direction, practiceleadershipand hands‑on technical challenge when it matters.

Whatyou will do

• Lead thePensions & SavingsAI and Automation Engineering practice, setting its technical direction, delivery standards, operatingmodeland talent strategy
• Define and implement a Forward Deployed Engineer model, embedding engineers in Pensions & Savings Journey and Product teams, where they work alongside product and business colleagues to understand problems and build solutions together.
• Collaborate with AI teams across the Enterprise,participatingin Enterprise AI initiatives and transformationensuringappropriateengagementwith AICoEGovernance and Framework
• TurnPensions & savingsAI and automation priorities into an executable engineering roadmap, balancing rapid experimentation with resilient production delivery
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership across solution design, engineeringqualityand complex delivery decisions, while creating space for engineers to own outcomes
• Build reusable platforms, patterns and components for AI agents, intelligent automation and low-code or pro-code solutions, reducing duplication and accelerating delivery
• Create strong engineering lifecycle controls covering security, data protection, testing, observability, model and prompt evaluation, human oversight,releaseand support
• Partner with business units and product teams to shape use cases, redesign processes andestablishmeasurable value,adoptionand service outcomes
• Work closely withthe AI Centre of Excellence, Architecture, information security,Risk so that responsible AI and regulatory expectations are embedded by design
• Develop a high‑performing, inclusive team and wider engineering community through coaching, standards, careerpathwaysand strategic partners
• Own engineering performance, capacity, suppliercontributionand financial discipline, using evidence to prioritise investment and continuously improve

What are we looking for?

• Proven leadership of AI, automation,softwareor platform engineering teams, with accountability for delivering secure, reliable services into production
• Strong technical depth in modern AI and automation engineering, including generative AI or agentic solutions, cloud platforms, APIs,integrationand software engineering practices.
• Technical depth across AWS (Bedrock,AgentCore) and Azure (Copilot Studio, Foundry),alsoacross agentic frameworks such asLangGraph,PydanticAI, etc. sufficient to guide toolselectionand challenge designs for workflow orchestration, toolintegrationand human oversight
• A strong working understanding of evaluation and monitoring tools such asLangfuse,LangSmith,DeepEvalorPromptfoo, and of how to trace agent behaviour, evaluate outputs andmonitorproduction performance at scale
• Experience setting direction on AI gateways for secure model access,routingandrate limits
• Practical knowledge ofMLOpsandLLMOps, including model and prompt management, evaluation, guardrails, monitoring, explainability, cost optimisation and continuous improvement
• Experienceestablishingengineering standards andlifecycle controls for security, testing, evaluation, observability,resilienceand operational support
• A track recordof translating business strategy into prioritised roadmaps and measurable outcomes, working effectively across product, technology, data,riskand operational teams
• Inclusive people leadership and the ability to attract, coach and develop senior engineers while influencing executives,partnersand multidisciplinary stakeholders

How will we measure success?

• A clear, prioritised engineering roadmap aligned to business outcomes and responsible AI guardrails
• AI and automation solutions moving safely from experimentation into supported production services
• Reusable engineering patterns and improved delivery flow
• Measurable value, adoption,reliabilityand risk outcomes for the services delivered
• A stronghybridengineering capability with clear standards,skillsand career pathways

We want to hire thewhole versionof you.

We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from whatwe’veadvertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role,we’dlove to hear from you.

If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.

Find out more about working at Standard Life

Guide for Candidates:standardlifeplc.pagetiger.com/guideforcandidates

Find or get answers from our colleagues:www.standardlifeplc.com/careers/talk-to-us

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