Lead AI Engineer in Manchester

Bally’s Intralot is a newly formed company established through the combination of Intralot and Bally’s International Interactive, positioning the group as a top iGaming operator and a leading global provider of lottery solutions. Bally’s Intralot is uniquely positioned across digital online gaming markets, lottery, iLottery, and sports betting. Operating at the intersection of technology, regulation, and entertainment, we are optimally positioned to capitalise on strong global growth trends driven by digital adoption and regulatory expansion across lottery and iGaming markets.

You'll lead a new AI Engineering function that runs in two halves under one team: R&D proves what's possible in personalisation, recommendation, search and agents; a delivery layer ships it into the live product for real players. This is a founding leadership role. You'll build density around an established AI R&D nucleus, drive its technical execution, grow the engineers in it, and stay close enough to the work to lead from the front across the lobby and discovery experience and the content pipelines behind it: recommendation, contextual bandits, dynamic categorisation, advanced search, agents, and automatic content generation.

It's a hands‑on leadership role: you own the technical bar and the how, line‑manage and grow the team, and carry enough technical weight to make the hard calls and be trusted on them.

What will you be doing?

• Drive the technical execution of the AI R&D agenda: decide how problems get approached, which technical and architectural bets are worth making, and how capability gets proven across personalisation, recommendation, search and agents.
• Lead one team spanning R&D and delivery: line‑manage, grow, and unblock the engineers, and be accountable for both proving capability and shipping it into the live product.
• Set the production bar and standards for AI features end to end — how experimental work crosses into hardened, observable, maintainable systems without losing its edge.
• Stay hands‑on where it counts: lead from the front on the hard problems, pressure test the technical bets, and be credible in the code without owning delivery of every feature yourself.
• Own the path from validated prototype to live: real‑time personalisation, recommendation, search and ranking against live traffic, within real latency budgets and reliability realities.
• Hold a high engineering bar on AWS and TypeScript — clean CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability, testing, and LLMOps for running model‑backed systems in production.
• Shape delivery against the roadmap with the VP, product managers, data analysts and Staff Engineers, and make the capability compound across brands rather than be rebuilt per brand.
• Work within Responsible Gambling and UKGC requirements, in a regulated, real money, real‑time domain.

What will you need?

• Significant commercial software engineering experience, including experience leading technical teams or engineering functions.
• Strong expertise in TypeScript and Python, with a proven track record of delivering AI, machine learning or data‑driven solutions into production, including recommendation engines, intelligent search, ranking systems or LLM‑powered applications.
• Extensive experience building and operating cloud‑native applications on AWS, with strong knowledge of CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability and modern engineering practices.
• Experience delivering high‑performance, real‑time systems that operate reliably at scale with demanding latency requirements.
• Demonstrated experience leading the successful transition of AI solutions from research or proof of concept into robust, production‑ready services.
• Experience establishing technical standards, driving engineering excellence and mentoring or developing engineers within high‑performing teams.

Skills & Behaviours:

• A technical leader who enjoys building, mentoring and developing engineering teams while creating an environment where innovation can thrive.
• Able to balance experimentation with engineering discipline, making sound technical decisions that deliver long‑term value.
• Confident leading technical discussions, influencing architecture and making complex decisions across multiple stakeholders.
• Passionate about building scalable, maintainable and observable AI systems using modern engineering best practices.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering, product, data and leadership teams.
• Comfortable remaining hands‑on with technology while providing strategic technical leadership and direction.

What benefits will you get?

• 25 days annual leave, plus the bank holiday allowance.
• Health insurance.
• Volunteering days.
• Home office allowance.
• Wellness or Gym allowance.
• Flexi‑block policy allowing you to work abroad for up to four weeks a year.

DNA / Values:

At Bally’s Intralot we are driven by a set of core values that we like to call our DNA. We strive to embody our DNA and keep them at the heart of everything we do! We Win as One, we succeed together - across every location and every function. We collaborate openly, raise each other up, and share the wins. We're Powered by Curiosity, we ask questions, challenge assumptions and make space to learn and innovate. We have Fun with Purpose, we bring creativity, energy and joy to how we work and what we deliver, because when people enjoy what they do, the work is better for everyone. Our teams Embrace the Possibility, when opportunity appears, we act. When the unexpected hits, we adapt. We don’t wait for change - we move towards it. At Bally's Intralot, we Guard the Game, we protect what matters most, fair play for our players, integrity for our partners, and accountability in everything we do.

Equal Opportunities

At Bally’s Intralot, we are committed to promoting equal opportunities in employment and working conditions. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are important to us, and we encourage a culture where everyone can be themselves at work. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success, this is our superpower. We do not discriminate against employees or job applicants on the basis of race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, age, sex or sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, political opinion or disability.