AI Technical Lead

AI Technical Lead£70,000 – £80,000 + bonus | Mostly remote The opportunityJoin an established software business at the beginning of a major AI transformation and take technical ownership of its new AI capability.This isn’t an isolated innovation role or a stream of disposable prototypes. You’ll remain hands-on, leading a small team to take AI ideas from an initial business problem through to secure, scalable functionality within established commercial products.You’ll have the backing of a large international technology group, combined with the freedom and visibility of a close-knit R&D team. You’ll influence the architecture, engineering standards, delivery approach and long-term AI roadmap.ResponsibilitiesProvide hands-on technical leadership across a multidisciplinary AI engineering teamShape the architecture and technical direction for AI across the product suiteLead the delivery of LLM, RAG and agentic AI solutionsTake ideas from discovery and proof of concept through to productionEstablish standards for evaluation, security, observability, governance and cost controlWork directly with product and operational stakeholders to turn high-level problems into deliverable solutionsMentor engineers, review designs and code, and remain actively involved in developmentAssess where AI adds genuine value—and challenge its use where a conventional solution would be betterAbout youYou’ll be an experienced technical lead or senior backend engineer with genuine experience delivering AI functionality into production.The established product environment is primarily C#/.NET and Microsoft Azure, so experience with this stack would be valuable. However, applications are also welcome from strong backend engineers working with Python, Java, Go or Node.js who understand distributed systems, production AI architecture and can work effectively across technologies.You’ll combine hands-on engineering depth with the ability to lead others, make architectural decisions and communicate technical trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders.Experience with Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, RAG, agentic workflows, Semantic Kernel or Microsoft Agent Framework, vector databases, evaluation frameworks and responsible AI controls would be particularly useful.Salary and benefitsUp to £80,000 plus bonusMostly remote, with occasional visits to the Bristol officeThe opportunity to build and lead a new AI engineering capabilityGenuine influence over architecture, recruitment and the AI roadmapA hands-on leadership role with real product ownershipPerkbox, Cycle-to-Work scheme and 24/7 employee supportSabbatical option after two yearsIf you want to lead a team building AI that reaches real customers—and have a genuine say in how that capability is created—we’d like to hear from you.