AI Data Platform Lead

RedCompass Labs; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus up to 10%

Life Insurance

Income Protection

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Pension Plan

28 days holiday

Sick leave

Job summary

RedCompass Labs in Manchester is seeking an AI Data Platform Lead to own the data foundation behind our Payments Expert Agent. You will report to the Head of AI Engineering and line-manage our DevOps/Platform engineers, operating in a regulated environment where data quality is the product.

You will own ETL pipelines, real-time data flows, benchmarking, and deployment strategies for internal LLMs, with a highly collaborative, globally distributed team.

Qualifications

• Track record owning production data platforms at scale (ETL/ELT).
• Experience in financial services or regulated data sources.
• Experience with RAG and knowledge retrieval systems; measurement and improvement.
• Hands-on with LLM evaluation, eval harnesses and regression testing of non-deterministic systems.
• Proficient in Python; comfortable in an Azure-native environment.

Responsibilities

• Own the ETL data platform and knowledgebase ingestion, transformation, refresh and quality.
• Ensure steady flow of accurate, real-time data into knowledge stores.
• Own AI agent and knowledge benchmarking; define strategy and build implementation.
• Develop infrastructure strategy and implementation for AI product deployment.
• Develop observability of AI agent and knowledge usage; define strategy and implementation.
• Own strategy to productionise internally trained LLMs; move models from research into deployment.
• Lead our SRE and Observability team.

Skills

Production data platforms

Financial services

RAG & retrieval systems

LLM evaluation

Python

Azure-native

Technical strategy

DevOps leadership

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Azure Functions

Azure Storage

Orchestration tooling

Docker

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

Job description

Manchester UK, hybrid (60% office presence per year after onboarding period)

About RedCompass Labs:

RedCompass Labs are payments experts focused exclusively on payments modernization. Over the last 23 years, RedCompass Labs has delivered 500+ projects across the world’s major payments schemes and platforms, including ISO 20022, SEPA, Swift, the Real-time Payments Network, and FedNow, ISO 20022 migrations, and FIS OPF, Finastra GPP, and ACI Worldwide.

Its flagship Payments Expert Agent is an AI solution purpose-built for the full payments modernization software development lifecycle. Trained on decades of deep payments expertise and more than 30,000 curated documents, the agent is certified to SOC 2 Type II.

RedCompass Labs supports clients from offices in London, Warsaw, Brussels, Miami, Boston, Toronto, and Pune. For more information, visit www.redcompasslabs.com.

Mission:

Imagine reducing a 14-day financial analysis task to just 2 hours. At RedCompass Labs, we don't just imagine-we've built it.

We're transforming the trillion-dollar payments industry through intelligent automation. At the heart of our mission is AnalystAccelerator.ai, our proprietary multi-agent AI platform built to accelerate complex analysis in global banking and compliance.

We’re seeking AI Data Platform Lead to own the data foundation the Payments Expert Agent depends on. Reporting to our Head of AI Engineering, you'll own the ETL platform behind our internal payments knowledgebase and the benchmarking strategy that tells us whether our agents and knowledge are actually any good. You'll line manage our DevOps team, working in a regulated, high-stakes environment where the quality of what the agent knows is the product.

As a AI Data Platform Lead, you would:

You will own the data platform and evaluation capability that determine how good our AI products actually are:

• Own the ETL data platform that services and maintains our internal payments knowledgebase - ingestion, transformation, refresh, and quality.
• Ensure a steady flow of accurate, real-time data into our knowledge stores.
• Own AI agent and knowledge benchmarking - defining the strategy and building the implementation that measures agent and retrieval quality.
• Develop infrastructure strategy and implementation for AI product deployment.
• Develop observability of AI agent and knowledge usage - strategy and implementation.
• Own the strategy to productionise internally trained LLMs - taking models from research into deployable form.
• Leadour SRE and Observability team

Candidate Profile

We’re seeking a hands-on technical leader who can set direction and build the thing themselves when it matters.

• Track record building and owning production data platforms - ETL/ELT at scale, not just pipeline contributions.
• Financial services experience, or experience with other highly regulated data sources.
• Experience with RAG and knowledge retrieval systems, including how retrieval quality is measured and improved.
• Hands-on with LLM and agent evaluation - benchmarking, eval harnesses, and regression testing of non-deterministic systems.
• Python experience, and comfortable in an Azure-native environment.
• Experience setting technical strategy and seeing it through to implementation - across data, infrastructure, and evaluation.
• Experience line managing a technical team, including DevOps or platform engineers, with the judgement to know when to delegate and when to go hands-on.
• Comfortable operating where the data is the product - you understand that knowledge quality determines whether the agent is trusted.

Bonus Qualifications

• Background in financial services, payments, or another regulated domain.
• Experience productionising trained or fine-tuned models, including serving and monitoring.
• Experience with data platforms deployed into client-controlled environments.
• Data platform: Azure-native - Data Factory, Functions, storage, and orchestration tooling.
• Retrieval & knowledge: RAG systems, vector and hybrid search, Azure AI Search, MCP servers.
• Evaluation: benchmarking and eval frameworks for agent and retrieval quality.
• Core:Python, Docker, GitHub Actions / Azure DevOps

What We Offer

Work with real purpose. At RedCompass Labs, your projects carry weight beyond the delivery plan. Our work sits at the intersection of global financial infrastructure and some of the most important crime-fighting efforts in the world. Through our RedFlag Accelerator, we help financial institutions identify the financial traces of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation - and the data platform that powers our AI products is a vital part of making that possible. This is technical leadership with a genuine reason to care.

A place where your judgement is trusted. RedCompass Labs is built on expertise, not hierarchy. As Lead of AI Data Platform, you will have real ownership of the platform and evaluation strategy - not a supporting role on someone else's programme. Your perspective will be sought, your decisions respected, and your contribution visible at the highest levels of the organisation.

A team that genuinely invests in its people. We are committed to your development - not just your output. You will have access to a dedicated Career Development Manager, structured performance reviews, and a culture that encourages continuous learning. Whether you are an emerging technical leader building your foundation or an experienced practitioner ready for a more complex challenge, we will meet you where you are.

A global community of specialists. With colleagues across London, Warsaw, Brussels, Toronto, Pune, and Miami, you will work alongside some of the sharpest minds in payments. Our engagements span institutions, geographies, and regulatory environments - no two projects are alike, and the breadth of exposure is consistently one of the things our people value most about working here.

Contract of employment with RedCompass Labs includes the following competitive benefits package:

• Up to 10% of annual earnings as a personal performance bonus
• Life insurance
• Group Income Protection
• Health Insurance for you and your family
• Dental Insurance for you and your family
• Pension: the pension is currently 4% employer and 4% employee. You also have the option to increase your contributions to your private pension, if you wish.
• 28 days annual holiday plus Public & Bank holidays
• 7 days of sick leave paid 100% per annum

RedCompass Labs is committed to promoting and supporting a diverse and inclusive workplace, ensuring fair and equitable treatment for all. This fuels innovation and enables us to work better together with each other and for our clients.