Lead AI Engineer. in London

About MotorwayMotorway is the UK's largest online car-selling platform. We connect private sellers directly with over 8,000 dealers nationwide. Our online platform helps sellers achieve great prices for their cars while giving dealers fast, reliable access to the stock they want for their dealerships. Founded in 2017, our award-winning, technology-led approach has redefined the experience of selling a car. Motorway is backed by some of the world’s leading technology investors, having raised 143 million in Series C funding.This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-growing scale-up at a crucial phase of growth and help change an industry for the better.About the teamGenAI Engineering sits within Motorway's Data and AI function, alongside Machine Learning and the Machine Learning Data Platform. We own the AI features that shape how buyers and sellers experience the marketplace, from agentic workflows in the customer journey to LLM-powered tooling for our dealer network.When it works, someone sells their car more easily. We have a track record of successful deployments and a strong reputation as a result.Over the next two years the function scales from shipping AI features to running a serious GenAI platform.About the roleWe're looking for a Lead GenAI Engineer to set the technical standard for AI work across the function, and to build the hardest parts of it themselves.You'll own the architecture and standards for complex, product-facing GenAI work. You'll hold sign-off on the systems that carry real risk, and you'll be the person a squad comes to when they've hit something genuinely hard. This is a player-coach role: your own code sets the bar others refer back to, and you'll spend as much energy making senior engineers better as you do building.Retrieval quality is, and so is the data feeding it, evaluation you can trust, sensible behaviour when things fail, and getting it live and keeping it there. Set the architecture standard for complex GenAI work across the function, not by mandate but by building things others learn from and want to adopt.Hold sign-off on materially complex AI systems, catching architectural, safety and reliability problems before they reach production.Own the shared foundations that determine feature quality across teams: retrieval patterns, evaluation infrastructure, data pipelines, and the tooling that makes good practice the easy path.Bring specific, actionable industry insight into planning, explaining what a development means for our architecture rather than noting that the field moves fast.Strong Python, and SQL you genuinely use. A lot of this work is data work: grounding data, golden datasets, and understanding why something failed.MLOps tooling, deployment and cloud infrastructure (we run on AWS and GCP), and you can tell the difference between a choice that matters and one that doesn't.Your direct contributions set a quality bar for the people around you.You're not a blocker, but you'll stop a bad decision from shipping.You get satisfaction from the unglamorous work that makes AI features actually good, not just the part that demos well.You enjoy making other engineers better as much as building things yourself.You hold a two-to-three-year view without losing touch with what's shipping this month.Competitive salaryEquity scheme - we all share in Motorway's success25 days holidayFlexible working (2 days a week in our London office, with socials and snacks galore)Private medical insurance via BUPALife assurancePension scheme (we contribute 5%)Enhanced family leave (e.g. 26 weeks full pay for maternity or adoption)24/7 Employee Assistance ProgrammeEV leasing schemeCycle to work schemeNursery salary sacrifice scheme1 paid volunteering day a yearLocationLondonEmployment TypeFull timeLocation TypeHybridDepartmentProduct