Lead AI Architect – Capital Markets Strategy

As a Lead AI Architect, your role will be to own the AI architecture strategy, supporting our Capital Markets clients to design, implement and operate scalable architectures that support the effective deployment of AI models, playing a critical role in designing and delivering innovative architectures that seamlessly integrate AI solutions with existing systems. As an Associate Director, you will be an exceptional communicator, able to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders with ease. You will have a strong ability to collaborate and work effectively in a team environment, leveraging the strengths of others to achieve common goals, and you will be outcome focused and have a desire to be pragmatic in your approach to designing and delivering high‑quality solutions that meet or exceed client expectations.

Key Responsibilities

• Translating the vision of senior client stakeholders into the AI/ML/GenAI architectural strategy and implementation roadmap, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and digital transformation efforts.
• Providing recommendations on the suitability of AI/ML initiatives and use cases for scaling across our client organisations.
• Designing, recommending, and implementing end‑to‑end architectures that seamlessly integrate AI/ML solutions with existing client systems.
• Collaborating with Enterprise, Application, Data, and DevOps Architects, Data Scientists, MLOps and GenAI Engineers, and Business teams to pilot use cases and discuss architectural design.
• Selecting appropriate technologies from a pool of open‑source and commercial offerings, considering deployment models and integration with existing tools.
• Being responsible for the successful execution and operational improvement of AI‑powered applications using agile methodology.
• Working closely with security and risk leaders to foresee and mitigate risks, ensuring ethical AI implementation and compliance with upcoming regulations.
• Developing and maintaining contact with top decision makers, lead proposal development, and contribute to pricing strategies.
• Managing diverse teams within an inclusive team culture where people are recognised for their contribution and developing the capability of junior team members through 'on the job' training and formal development programmes.

Qualifications and Experience

• Have extensive experience in architecture related disciplines.
• Demonstrate experience across the Financial Services industry, with a primary focus on the Capital Markets sector.
• Demonstrate experience in implementing cloud‑based AI/ML workloads across one or more CSPs or third‑party vendor technologies, including Google PaLM and Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI Services and AzureML, AWS Bedrock and Sagemaker, Dataiku, Databricks, Snowflake SnowPark and Snowflake Cortex, Data Robot.
• Demonstrate experience in architecting scalable, performant, and cost optimized AI/ML solutions leveraging serverless technologies, container / Kubernetes based deployments, GPU compute infrastructure.
• Have a working knowledge of generative AI and hands on experience in deploying and hosting Large Foundational Models.
• Demonstrate experience with LLM architecture (e.g., Transformer, GANs, VAEs), fine‑tuning, Retrieval Augmented Generation techniques and context embedding, vector database technologies and Semantic Search techniques and tools.
• Demonstrate experience in writing robust and efficient code in Python and have experience in using tools related to deep learning like PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain.
• Have experience in designing and implementing key MLOps capabilities and frameworks in delivering robust train, test, monitor and improve lifecycles for AI/ML model deployments.
• Demonstrate knowledge in developing and integrating APIs especially related to serve ML models and on building solutions that are integrated with the enterprise to deliver end‑to‑end solutions, including an ability to recommend different options and advice what is right for the use case.
• Have experience in working within an architecture function and presenting architectural designs to a variety of stakeholders (incl. Technical Design Authorities or Architecture Boards).
• Demonstrate senior stakeholder management skills and collaborate effectively with multidisciplinary teams.
• Show an ability to bring teams together and lead technical programmes to drive success through applying coaching, facilitation, stakeholder management and expectation management capabilities.
• Have strong communication and collaboration abilities, with the capability to work effectively with cross‑functional teams and stakeholders.
• Be able to lead 'go‑to‑market' activities such as bids, responding to requests for proposal, and on developing high‑quality proposal materials.

Location and Working

Based in London with hybrid working. Hybrid working supports flexible remote and office collaboration aligned with role requirements.