Lead MLOPS Engineer

Position: Lead MLOPS Data Engineer

Reporting to: Head of Data Engineering

Location: York

Type: Permanent

The team

The Lead MLOPS Data Engineer is a key role that sits in the Group Enterprise Systems (GES) data team and holds the responsibility of developing and leading a team of MLOPS engineers and owning the MLOPS chapter. In this role you’ll have accountability for developing standards, processes and deliverables for MLOPS across GES. You’ll work collaboratively across other chapter leads within GES as well as collaborating with Data Scientists to bring ML models from development to production and ensure their ongoing performance. You’ll be someone who enjoys leading and coaching others, challenging and defining new ways of working and making things happen. You will consider stakeholder management one of your strengths, with the ability to effectively engage with both business and technical stakeholders at all levels. You will thrive on ownership and autonomy, whilst also being an outstanding collaborator.

The role

A lead MLOps Data Engineer will build and maintain the infrastructure for AI and ML models, focusing on data pipelines, automation, and deployment. This role bridges the gap between data engineering and machine learning, ensuring models are scalable, reliable, and monitorable in production.

Key responsibilities include:

• Demonstrate experience of leading a team of ML Engineers
• Developing and maintaining infrastructure for deploying ML models in both real-time and batch environments
• Designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines
• Creating and managing feature stores
• Ensuring data quality
• Collaborating with data scientists to productionize the models
• Have experience of working with partners and business stakeholders
• Must be able to work both independently and as a member of a team to deliver enterprise class data warehouse solutions

Technical Skills

• Solid experience as a Python developer, ideally in a machine learning engineering context
• Hands-on experience of integrated cloud data science platforms particularly GCP or Databricks
• Good understanding of core data science principles and understanding of challenges of migrating research code into production code
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practice
• Experience with infrastructure as code tools like Terraform
• Experience with CI/CD tools and Git-based development workflows
• Understanding of API operations monitoring and logging
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently on technical tasks
• Experience collaborating with technical and non-technical team members in agile Scrum ceremonies – roadmap planning, feature workshops, backlog elaboration, code review

Our nice to haves:

• Insurance industry experience
• Demonstrable experience in mentoring or supporting the development of junior team members

Behavioural

• Intellect and gravitas to influence and gain credibility with stakeholders
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Creative, proactive, logical and innovative – you do not accept the status quo
• Highly results driven, with the energy and determination to succeed in a fast paced environment
• Demonstrate a commitment to quality, service and personal ownership
• Deal well with ambiguity and enable a consensus to be reached
• An inquisitive mind-set and desire to understand both data and business requirements
• Continuous self-improvement and learning

Diversity & Benefits

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. Working life doesn’t always have to be in the office, so we have introduced hybrid working to encourage a healthy work life balance. This hybrid working model is set by the team rather than the business to enable you to manage your own personal work-life balance. We see it as the best of both worlds; structure and sociability on one hand, and independence and flexibility on the other. Our benefits package includes a bonus, contributory pension, 25 days annual leave plus 2 Hiscox days and a 4 week paid sabbatical with every 5 years’ worth of service, private medical for all the family and much more.