AI Engineer (Grade F)

Developing the upcoming era of autonomous AI for colleagues and customers is our focus - ensuring safety, security, and scalability. As a Lead Software Engineer, you’ll set technical direction and lead multiple teams to design, build and run AI Agents on Google Cloud, blending open‑source tools with GCP native services. You’ll stay hands‑on when needed and help grow engineering capability - all while delivering outcomes at pace in a regulated environment.

Working closely with Engineering, Product and Architecture teams, you’ll define the strategy and technical direction for agentic AI services, establishing standards, patterns and quality expectations. You’ll lead and develop multiple engineering teams, fostering a high‑performing, inclusive culture while delivering resilient and scalable solutions.

You’ll design, build and operate AI Agents on Google Cloud using services such as Vertex AI, Cloud Run, GKE, BigQuery and IAM, integrating securely with enterprise systems and following modern engineering practices including CI/CD, automated testing, SRE and observability. You’ll have responsibility for the full solution lifecycle, ensuring platforms are secure, compliant, resilient and cost‑effective through robust guardrails, model evaluation, FinOps and effective security controls.

You’ll also drive engineering excellence by developing reusable components and standards, leading vendor engagements, simplifying infrastructure and influencing senior stakeholders across the platform.

Benefits

• A generous holiday allowance: You’ll be eligible for a minimum of 22 days holiday (excluding bank holidays), rising to 30 days based on length of service and grade.
• A flexible way of working: Whether you want flexibility over your location or when you log on, together we can create an approach that works for you and for the business.
• Family leave: Up to 63 weeks of maternity or adoption leave. Statutory maternity or adoption pay is available for 39 weeks, and 20 weeks will be enhanced to the equivalent of full pay. Partners can have six weeks of fully paid paternity leave.
• Flex cash: This is 4% of your basic salary and can be used to spend on the benefits of your choice, or you can choose to take it as a cash top up in your monthly salary.
• Health insurance: Our company funded Private Medical Benefit provides all colleagues with access to good quality medical care, including accommodation, nursing care and specialist advice.
• Colleague Offers: Get discounts on everything from electrical items to cinema tickets and weekly food shopping. You can share this benefit with up to ten family members or friends.
• Financial products: Take advantage of our great financial products, some at a discounted rate, including current accounts, home and car insurance and loans.
• Share plans: Participate in Sharematch and receive matching shares of up to £45 a month from the company, and you can choose to participate in Sharesave, our combined savings and share option plan.
• Pension: We offer a generous pension plan, with all joiners being automatically enrolled in our ‘Your Tomorrow’ scheme. You can decide how much you save and get a say in where your contributions are invested.

Working Pattern and Qualifications

• Hybrid, 40% (or two days) in our Manchester office location.
• Hands‑on experience with agentic AI: building LLM‑powered applications/agents, tool use, orchestration, retrieval (RAG), prompt and safety engineering, evaluation and telemetry.
• Proficiency in Python and TypeScript, with experience delivering production services (APIs, event‑driven systems, microservices), ideally on GCP.
• Proficient knowledge of cloud‑native engineering: containers (GKE/Cloud Run), Terraform/IaC, continuous integration/continuous deployment, automated quality assurance, observability, optimizing performance, and managing incidents.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to simplify complex concepts into clear, outcome‑focused narratives.
• Solid knowledge of security, privacy and compliance in regulated environments; confident working with Risk, Security and Legal teams.
• Proven technical leadership of large, multi‑team deliveries - setting strategy, making sound architectural decisions and enabling teams to deliver at pace.
• Experience with Vertex AI Agent Builder/Agentspace, LangGraph, multi‑agent patterns or agent‑to‑agent protocols.
• Knowledge of data governance and model risk practices in financial services.
• Exposure to Azure/AWS or cross‑cloud patterns.
• Experience building communities of practice and engineering guilds.