Lead AI Scientist in Wellington

As an AI technical delivery lead at Lloyds Banking Group, you will be an expert practitioner at the forefront of the Group's AI transformation. In this role, you will lead the technical delivery of cutting‑edge artificial intelligence, machine learning, and generative AI solutions, guiding their application to drive business value while ensuring ethical and responsible implementation. You will work within the AI Centre of Excellence, collaborating with diverse teams to solve complex financial challenges and create innovative, customer‑centric banking solutions.

Role Responsibilities

• AI Solution Design: Lead the development of AI use‑case solution designs, balancing innovation with practicality. Apply appropriate data science techniques to develop and/or tune models and evaluate performance.
• Project Delivery: Oversee the entire data science / AI delivery lifecycle, from data exploration to model development/tuning to deployment, monitoring, and performance optimisation using ML and AI Ops best practices.
• Collaboration: Lead and work within cross‑functional teams comprising of business leaders, product managers, data scientists, data engineers and ML/AI engineers.
• Responsible AI Governance: Partner with the Responsible AI team to embed robust ethical principles, bias mitigation techniques, and regulatory compliance into all AI development workflows.
• Team Mentorship: Coach and mentor junior data scientists and AI engineers, helping to grow team capabilities and fostering a culture of continuous learning and curiosity.
• Continuous Learning: Maintain an active view of emerging tools and techniques. Develop proof‑of‑concepts to demonstrate new capabilities. Guide the team in solving complex AI use cases and improving existing approaches.

Inclusive Workplace

Our focus is to ensure we're inclusive every day, building an organisation that reflects modern society and celebrates diversity in all its forms. We want our people to feel that they belong and can be their best, regardless of background, identity or culture. We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and a dedicated Working with Cancer initiative. And it’s why we especially welcome applications from under‑represented groups. We’re disability confident. So, if you’d like reasonable adjustments to be made to our recruitment processes, just let us know.

What You’ll Need

• Extensive experience developing and deploying AI systems and machine learning models in a production environment.
• Master’s or PhD (preferred) in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or relevant STEM field.
• Deep knowledge of AI/ML concepts, algorithms, and techniques, including Generative AI, Agentic AI and reinforcement learning.
• Strong proficiency in programming languages, particularly Python.
• Expertise in AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch/TensorFlow, Scikit‑learn, Statsmodels, LangGraph and ADK.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (preferably Google Cloud Platform and Vertex AI).
• Strong analytical, critical thinking, and complex problem‑solving abilities.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and influencing skills, with the ability to convey business information from technical subject matter.
• A high degree of ethical awareness, with an understanding of AI ethics, risk mitigation, and bias detection.
• Adaptability and a passion for continuous learning to keep up with the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Benefits

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%
• An annual bonus award, subject to Group performance
• Share schemes including free shares
• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping
• 30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top
• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies