Engineering Manager (AI Delivery Lead)

London based, two office days per week, with some travel to the UAE.

Company & Role

This role sits with a global IT solutions provider standing up something genuinely different: an autonomous rapid prototyping pod for banking, insurance and fintech clients. A small, elite team that wins its own work, takes an ambiguous client problem, and turns it into a working AI prototype in four to five weeks, then hardens it into production. Your job is to make that machine run. You will lead the pod, engineers across applied AI, agentic systems, full stack and quality, from discovery through to production, owning scope, timeline and delivery governance. This is an engineering management role, not a project management one. You need the technical background to read code, challenge engineers on risk and keep work flowing in parallel, in an environment where scope is rarely clear at the start and the answer is always a plan A, B and C rather than an excuse. You are the team's leader and the delivery voice into the AI Director and pre-sales, translating engineering progress into commitments the business can stand behind.

Why This Role Stands Out

You are helping stand up a genuinely new capability, not maintaining someone else's. The pod is fully autonomous and converts prototypes straight into production delivery, so the pace is real and so is the ownership. There is proper leadership scope here: growing engineers, owning the pod's budget and hiring, shaping how a self-sufficient team works, with the compliance and governance dimension (including the EU AI Act) that regulated financial services delivery demands. This is engineering leadership with genuine technical teeth, at the sharp end of production AI. There is a growing UAE dimension to the business too. Nothing is expected, but if working in or relocating to the UAE would ever appeal, they will back you to do it.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a cross functional pod (applied AI, agentic, full stack and QA) from discovery through to production delivery.
• Work with the Forward Deployed Engineer and AI Director to shape client requirements into a delivery plan, phases and epics, defining who builds what and when.
• Keep work flowing in parallel across the team, unblocking dependencies fast and holding a plan A, B and C when scope shifts.
• Run sprint planning, backlog and delivery governance, keeping documentation and Jira genuinely current.
• Ensure compliance with relevant regulation, including the EU AI Act, data residency and audit trail requirements.
• Challenge engineers on technical decisions and risk, with the credibility to read code and question implementation choices.
• Communicate engineering delivery clearly to the AI Director and pre-sales teams in business terms.
• Own the pod as a cost centre, including hiring decisions and tooling and infrastructure investment.
• Grow the team through regular feedback and pairing, and foster a blameless, continuous learning culture.

Ideal Experience

• An engineering management background, leading cross functional software teams through delivery.
• A genuine technical foundation, able to read code (Python, modern web stacks), review technical decisions and challenge engineers on risk.
• Track record delivering projects with unclear or shifting scope, maintaining clarity and continuity across delivery phases.
• Experience running parallel workstreams and keeping a whole team productive, not just administering tickets.
• Strong, precise communication with both engineers and senior stakeholders.
• Financial services, banking, insurance or fintech experience, or other regulated environments.
• AI and ML project delivery experience such as LLM solutions, agent orchestration or RAG.
• Experience scaling delivery from discovery and MVP through to production.
• Startup pace and ownership mindset rather than heavy process.
• Understanding of the EU AI Act and regulated delivery governance.