AI Technical Lead

Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries. People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It's what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities - work/life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering - you'll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.

The role involves moving from deploying AI tools to embedding AI into how the business actually works. The Group AI Function has a clear mandate to drive that shift, and the next phase demands stronger technical governance, sharper architecture thinking, and closer oversight of what's being built across the organisation. The AI Technical Lead is the technical authority inside the function, owning architecture governance, leading the assessment of AI tools and vendors, and providing technical oversight across AI initiatives running inside Howden and with external delivery partners.

Key responsibilities include:

• Architecture governance: Own the technical governance process for AI tools and platforms across the Group. Lead Architecture Review Board submissions, produce architecture and security design documentation, and work alongside Enterprise Architecture as the AI function's technical representative.
• Vendor and tooling assessment: Lead the technical evaluation of inbound AI vendors and tools. Build a repeatable assessment framework that gives the Head of AI a clear, evidence-based view of what to adopt, what to decline, and where to build instead.
• Oversight of AI delivery: Provide the technical oversight that ensures quality, protects Howden’s IP, and prevents the organisation from becoming dependent on third parties for capability it should own internally.
• Technical enablement: Set and maintain technical standards for how AI is built across the business, covering areas like agent development, knowledge retrieval, prompt engineering, and evaluation.
• Technical partnership to the Head of AI: Provide the technical grounding that allows the Head of AI to make well-informed decisions quickly.

Essential background and experience include:

• Hands-on experience with large language models, retrieval systems, and agent frameworks.
• Exposure to insurance or another regulated industry.
• Cloud-native AI architecture experience.
• Experience with enterprise AI platform governance.
• Track record writing architecture or security design documentation.
• Familiarity with AI evaluation and quality assurance approaches.
• Strong communication skills.
• Previous work in an architecture review or governance context.
• Intellectually curious, low-ego, and comfortable moving fast in ambiguous conditions.
• Experience in a small, high-output team.

Over the first year, success in this role means:

• Architecture governance runs smoothly.
• A repeatable vendor assessment process is in place and being used consistently.
• Technical oversight of external delivery partners is formalised and effective.
• AI standards and best practices are being adopted across the business.
• The Head of AI has a technical partner who makes decision-making faster and better.

The Group AI Function is deliberately small, working directly with senior stakeholders and operating across the whole Group. The pace is real and the problems are interesting. The culture values getting things right over looking right.

What do we offer in return? A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity - there is no one Howden type. We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs.

Howden began in 1994, and now there are 23,000 of us, managing $37bn of premiums for our clients. Our largest shareholder group is us - the people who work in the business.