AI Risk Lead in London

The AI and Innovation department delivers robust, scalable, and secure AI solutions across the bank's global platforms, acting as a business-facing service provider dedicated to advanced technology, operational excellence, and innovation. This group supports the bank's extensive footprint in Asia, the Americas, and other regions. The department is responsible for maintaining a comprehensive catalogue of AI products and services. In addition, the function manages the portfolio of end user managed applications (EUMA) platforms ensuring these applications—created and maintained directly by business units—are governed with proper oversight, operational resilience, and alignment to technology and risk management frameworks.

The AI Risk Lead is responsible for identifying, assessing, and mitigating AI-specific technology risks across the bank's AI solutions. The role ensures AI systems are designed, built, and deployed in line with the bank's AI governance framework, cybersecurity policies, and technology standards, while enabling safe and responsible innovation. The role has clear accountability for shaping and challenging the risk architecture of AI solutions, ensuring that security, control, and governance requirements are embedded into solution design, operating model decisions, and delivery lifecycle controls from the outset.

• Own AI technology risk management, including identification, assessment, mitigation, and ongoing oversight of AI-specific risks across design, data pipelines, model behaviour, system integration, automation, resilience, explainability, and bias.
• Lead AI threat modelling and control design, covering prompt injection, retrieval poisoning, model and data leakage, model misuse, and tool abuse, and ensure effective mitigations such as guardrails, grounding checks, filtering, secrets isolation, and secure development practices.
• Define and maintain minimum AI control standards, including data lineage and provenance, privacy and DPIA, fairness and explainability, resilience and failover, logging and monitoring, access management, and human-in-the-loop / human-on-the-loop controls where decision impact requires it.
• Partner closely with AI engineering, architecture, cybersecurity, data risk, model risk, legal, compliance, and governance teams to ensure clear ownership, consistent standards, and joined-up risk management for AI solutions.
• Lead the development and continuous improvement of AI technology risk controls, ensuring alignment with the bank's AI governance framework, enterprise technology risk standards, and cybersecurity policies.
• Support AI and technology governance committees, providing clear, concise risk assessments, dashboards, and decision papers that give senior management visibility of AI risk posture, emerging issues, and control effectiveness.

We're looking for the following skills and experience:

• Solid understanding of AI/ML technologies, including model development lifecycles, data pipelines, model monitoring, and common AI risk failure modes.
• Knowledge of AI governance and risk frameworks, and how they integrate with cybersecurity, data protection, and technology control frameworks.
• Experience assessing risks related to model performance, bias, explainability, data quality, third-party AI, and adversarial threats.
• Familiarity with risk assessment methodologies, control design, assurance testing, and issue management.
• Strong experience in technology risk, information security, or IT risk management.
• Solid understanding of AI governance, model risk management and responsible AI principles—including transparency, fairness, explainability and data privacy.

ICBC Standard Bank Plc (ICBCS) is a leading financial markets and commodities bank, driven to deliver the right outcomes for our stakeholders, clients, counterparties and markets. We benefit from a unique Chinese and African parentage and an unrivalled global network and expertise. We're headquartered in London, with operations in Shanghai, Singapore and New York. We're a diverse and close-knit global team. We put people first, giving talented, self-driven professionals the flexibility, rewards and freedom to grow their expertise and realise their potential. Our vision statement, "Be Yourself, Succeed Together" underpins our drive for an open and transparent culture which values difference, enabling everyone to thrive whilst being themselves. We have an active E, D&I forum and we're growing other employee network groups, including for women and neurodiversity. We're committed to the principle of equal opportunities. All applicants will be treated equally and will be considered on their merits and skills without discrimination.

What's in it for you?

• Financial market-based pay based on skills and experience, discretionary annual bonus, pension contribution 10% (employee contribution 5%), travel insurance, life assurance and income replacement insurance.
• Hybrid working - the option to work remotely up to two days per week, depending on the role.
• Family - 6 months fully paid maternity leave and enhanced shared parental leave.
• Coaching for family leave returners and access to emergency care via My Family Care.
• Miscarriage and menopause policies.
• Wellbeing - private medical insurance, Bike2Work scheme, health and fitness subsidy, holiday exchange and an Employee Assistance Programme.
• Community - paid volunteering leave and Give As You Earn scheme.
• Vibrant CSR and engagement forums and fundraising for our charity partners.
• Development - a suite of opportunities to build the skills you need to excel in your role.

If you're excited about becoming part of our team, get in touch. We'd love to hear from you!