AI & Automation Lead

AI & Automation LeadBolton | Hybrid – 2 days a week onsiteAI Engineering | LLMs | GenAI | Agentic AI | n8n | Technical Leadership | CloudWe’re looking for an AI & Automation Lead to provide hands-on technical leadership across an established AI engineering team.This is a technical role for someone with strong AI engineering experience and hands-on n8n expertise, who enjoys building solutions, solving complex engineering problems and helping other engineers deliver high-quality work.You’ll lead the technical delivery across a team of three AI Engineers while remaining hands-on with coding and technically complex work yourself.A key part of the role will be helping mature the existing AI and automation environment – establishing robust n8n engineering standards, improving monitoring and resilience, and ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable and production-ready.What you’ll be doingYou’ll provide day-to-day technical leadership to the AI engineering team, helping determine how solutions are designed, built, deployed and supported.You’ll:Lead the technical design and delivery of AI, LLM and GenAI solutionsRemain hands-on with coding and development, particularly on technically complex or novel workEstablish and embed a robust n8n design and implementation frameworkDefine appropriate monitoring and alerting across workflow automation servicesImprove the resilience and reliability of existing AI solutions and processesSupport AI Engineers with solution design, technical challenges and engineering decisionsSet and maintain high standards around coding, development, testing and deploymentReview technical approaches and code, identifying potential issues before they reach productionEnsure AI and automation solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable and production-readyLead a team of three AI Engineers, managing priorities, workloads and technical deliveryProvide technical 1:1s, mentoring and support, helping remove blockers and develop the teamSet team objectives and identify where additional technical resource may be requiredDevelop reusable components, templates and engineering best practiceWork alongside wider internal and offshore technical teamsSupport effective cost management across n8n and AI processesWhat we’re looking for?There are two key areas of experience we're looking for: hands-on AI engineering and strong n8n experience.You’ll have:Hands-on experience building and deploying AI/ML solutions into production, including production coding experienceStrong knowledge of LLMs, Generative AI and agentic system designStrong hands-on experience with n8n, building and implementing workflow automation solutionsExperience taking AI solutions from design through to production deploymentExperience designing reliable, scalable and maintainable technical solutionsAn understanding of monitoring, alerting and resilience within production environmentsThe technical depth to guide other engineers and make sound engineering decisionsExperience setting or implementing engineering standards and best practiceExperience deploying AI/ML solutions using Azure, AWS or GCPExperience leading and developing engineers, including mentoring, technical guidance and managing prioritiesA good understanding of data management, security and compliance within AI deliveryExperience with RPA technologies such as Blue Prism would be useful, but isn't essential.This is a great opportunity for an experienced AI Engineer who wants to combine hands-on engineering with technical team leadership. You’ll inherit a team of three AI Engineers and play a key role in strengthening the technical foundations around both AI and n8n – improving how solutions are built, monitored, supported and scaled.You might currently be a Lead AI Engineer, Senior AI Engineer, AI Technical Lead, AI Engineering Lead or an experienced AI/Automation Engineer already providing technical leadership to others.