Lead Artificial Intelligence Engineer

AI Engineering LeadWe’re exclusively partnering with a growing organisation making a significant investment in AI and looking for an AI Engineering Lead to help establish and build its internal AI engineering capability.This is a hands on technical leadership role sitting at the intersection of Generative AI, Azure and engineering. You’ll lead the design and production delivery of AI enabled solutions, establish the technical standards and architecture behind them, and provide technical direction to engineers as the capability grows.The focus is on taking AI beyond proof of concepts and experimentation and building secure, scalable solutions that can be used across the organisation.What you’ll be doingLeading the development of an internal Azure AI engineering capabilityDesigning and delivering production grade Generative AI and AI enabled solutionsProviding technical direction across Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, AI Search and Document IntelligenceDesigning RAG solutions, agentic workflows, tool calling, grounding and structured outputsDetermining where AI provides genuine value versus where traditional deterministic approaches are more appropriateEstablishing reusable AI architecture, engineering patterns and development standardsLeading and mentoring engineers working across AI enabled solutionsDesigning how AI applications integrate securely with enterprise systems, APIs, data and workflowsAddressing AI specific risks including hallucinations, prompt injection, data leakage and uncontrolled agent actionsEstablishing appropriate evaluation, monitoring, security and governance around production AIRemaining hands on across Python, C#/.NET and Azure where requiredOwning the technical lifecycle of AI solutions from architecture and development through to deployment and productionWhat we’re looking forIdeally, you’ll bring:Strong experience designing and delivering production solutions within Microsoft AzureCommercial experience delivering Generative AI or AI enabled applicationsExperience with Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry or equivalentUnderstanding of RAG, AI Search, agentic workflows, Document Intelligence and AI evaluationStrong software engineering foundations with Python, C#/.NET or bothExperience taking AI solutions beyond proof of concept and into secure production environmentsStrong Azure architecture knowledge across APIs, Functions, messaging, integrations and cloud servicesExperience with CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code and modern engineering practicesExperience leading or mentoring engineersThe ability to communicate AI architecture, risks and technical decisions to senior technical and non technical stakeholdersWhy this role?This is an opportunity to play a leading role in how a large organisation adopts and scales AI.Rather than joining an established AI function with all of the decisions already made, you’ll help define how AI solutions are architected, built, evaluated and deployed, while remaining close to the technology yourself.It would suit an experienced AI Engineering Lead, Azure AI Architect, Principal AI Engineer or senior Azure engineer who has moved heavily into Generative AI and wants the opportunity to shape a growing capability.

Location: London, hybridType: Permanent, full time