AI Business Partner - Builders

Your opportunity

Janus Henderson is undertaking a firm‑wide AI transformation programme to embed AI capabilities across every business function and become the most technologically sophisticated asset manager in the world.

The AI Academy has already been established with a focus on helping users consume AI inside M365.

Our next major expansion is enabling the firm’s builders – engineers, architects, product owners, analysts, data engineers, quants, and platform specialists – to encode AI into the way technology is delivered and operated.

The AI Business Partner for Builders will design and run this expansion.

You will define the curriculum, stand up the cohort model, and partner across Technology, Investments, and Innovation to ensure all builders are utilizing modern AI tooling with broad knowledge sharing on best practices and organizational knowledge on the latest developments in AI deployment.

You will also work closely with Percepta and the technology organization to extend the program into maximizing the AI‑native application development occurring on JHOS.

This is not a purely a training role or governance role.

It sits at the intersection of hands‑on technical credibility, program design, and change enablement – helping builders work differently and accelerate our AI transformation.

This will include directly engaging with builders on specific high‑priority projects, and then extending that learning and knowledge to the rest of the community.

You will report into the Head of Innovation and operate within the AI Academy framework alongside the AI Business Partner team, sharing infrastructure, governance, comms, and the firm‑wide adoption dashboard.

Your primary toolkit today spans the modern AI engineering stack – coding agents, agentic harnesses, MCP, in‑platform AI in Snowflake and Databricks, and the JHOS / NEXUS platform Percepta is building – but the firm’s AI strategy is platform‑agnostic.

You will be expected to evaluate, learn, and deploy new tools as the landscape evolves.

Responsibilities

• Design and run the Builders curriculum: a general foundation for all builders (tools, models, agentic patterns, cross‑persona level‑setting) and role‑specific tracks for app engineers, data engineers, architects, security, product owners, and analysts
• Design and lead the Builders cohort – the technologist equivalent of Air Traffic Controllers – running them through the material first, iterating with their feedback, and equipping them to cascade training through their teams
• Partner with Percepta and the Technology org to design Phase 3: enabling engineers to build AI‑native applications on the JHOS platform, including agent orchestration, governance, and the NEXUS workspace
• Run hands‑on, workshop‑style sessions grounded in participants’ real sprint work covering coding agents, agentic CI/CD, planning with LLMs, spec writing and verification, long‑running agents, and team‑level skill sharing (CLAUDE. md, SKILLS. md, shared prompt libraries)
• Partner with Technology, Security, and Architecture to resolve adoption blockers – acceptable‑use guidance, access paths, budget signals, approved tools – so builders know what is sanctioned and can experiment with confidence
• Develop and implement appropriate metrics within the AI Academy framework: pipeline telemetry (deploy frequency, lead time, change failure rate, time to restore), survey‑based signals (focus time, perceived effectiveness), and adoption data across Git Hub Copilot, AI Foundry, APIM, Cortex, Databricks Genie Code, and the forthcoming LLM Gateway
• Stay current with the rapidly evolving AI engineering landscape – coding agents, agentic harnesses, MCP, model releases, benchmarks, DORA and industry research – and translate what matters into practical curriculum changes
• Collaborate with Technology, Security, and Responsible AI teams to ensure curriculum, tools, and patterns taught are aligned with the firm’s governance, data privacy, and compliance posture
• Carry out other duties as assigned
• What to expect when you join our firm
• Hybrid working and reasonable accommodations
• Generous holiday policies
• Excellent health and wellbeing benefits including corporate membership to Wellhub
• Paid volunteer time to step away from your desk and into the community
• Support to grow through professional development courses, tuition/qualification reimbursement and more
• Maternal/paternal leave benefits and family services
• All employee events including networking opportunities and social activities
• Lunch allowance for use within our subsidised onsite canteen
• Must have skills
• Hands‑on engineering credibility – you have shipped software and you currently use modern coding agents (Git Hub Copilot agent mode, Claude Code, Open Code, or equivalent) on real work.

You can sit down with a senior engineer, pair on their codebase, and add value within the hour

• Working fluency with the modern AI engineering stack – agentic harnesses, MCP, repo‑level context (CLAUDE. md / SKILLS. md), agentic CI/CD patterns, long‑running agents, and the tradeoffs between line completion, agent mode, and orchestrated multi‑agent workflows
• Curriculum design and facilitation experience – you have built and run technical training, workshops, or enablement programmes for engineers and other technologists, and you know the difference between a session people endure and one they apply on Monday morning
• Strong cross‑persona communication – equally credible with a staff engineer debating verification strategy, a product owner rewriting a spec for an agent, an architect worried about review throughput, and an SLT sponsor asking about ROI
• Practical change management instincts – you understand that tools and training are only half the job; surfacing and removing adoption blockers – access, acceptable‑use, budget, fear – is the other half
• Business analysis and measurement literacy – comfortable with DORA metrics, SPACE, developer experience research, and the difference between adoption (a prerequisite) and value (the goal).
• You can design a survey, interpret pipeline telemetry, and avoid vanity metrics
• Self‑directed and comfortable with ambiguity – this effort is brand new; you will define how it runs, with sponsorship but without a detailed playbook
• Strong documentation instincts – you produce reusable curriculum, patterns, and playbooks that outlast your direct involvement and can be picked up by cohort members and other Academy leads
• Experience working in a regulated environment (financial services, healthcare, legal, government) where governance, compliance, and data sensitivity shape how tools are evaluated, approved, and deployed
• Nice to have skills
• Direct experience in financial services or asset management, particularly exposure to investment technology, quant platforms, trading systems, or data engineering in a regulated context
• Experience building or operating AI‑native applications – agent orchestration, retrieval systems, evaluation pipelines, LLM application architecture
• Familiarity with the Janus Henderson Technology stack or analogous environments: Azure AI Foundry, APIM‑fronted LLM gateways, Snowflake Cortex, Databricks Genie Code, Git Hub Enterprise, Jira / Service Now workflows
• Familiarity with the JHOS / NEXUS platform direction or comparable internal AI platforms built on top of foundation models
• Background in developer experience, platform engineering, or internal tooling – where success is measured by other engineers’ productivity, not your own commits
• Experience leading a community of practice, internal guild, or cohort‑based enablement programme
• Product management sensibility – MVPs, iteration, user feedback, prioritisation – applied to curriculum and enablement rather than software features
• Familiarity with DORA research, SPACE, Accelerate, and current industry thinking on AI’s impact on the software development lifecycle
• Public contributions – talks, writing, open source – that demonstrate ongoing engagement with the AI engineering community
• Supervisory responsibilities
• No – but you will lead the Builders effort and develop cohort members, equipping them to facilitate within their own teams
• Potential for growth
• Leadership development programmes
• Regular training
• Career development services
• Continuing education courses
• Microsoft AI, Git Hub, Anthropic, and cloud‑platform certification pathways
• Exposure to a firm‑wide AI transformation programme with direct executive visibility
• Opportunity to shape a new function – the Tier 3 lead role is being established for the first time at Janus Henderson, with scope to define how AI enablement scales across the firm’s technologist population and into AI‑native product development on JHOS

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, pension/retirement plans, and various health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits
• Annual discretionary bonus opportunity – subject to company profit pool and performance

You will be expected to understand the regulatory obligations of the firm, and abide by the regulated entity requirements and JHI policies applicable for your role.

At Janus Henderson Investors we’re committed to an inclusive and supportive environment.

We believe diversity improves results and we welcome applications from candidates from all backgrounds.

Janus Henderson Investors is an equal opportunity employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

All applications are subject to background checks.

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