AI & ML Pod Lead — Production Systems & Delivery

Datatonic; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Holiday: 25 days + bank holidays

Private health insurance

Pension (Auto-enrollment)

Life Insurance

Income Protection

Cycle to Work Scheme

Tech Scheme

WFH allowance

Job summary

Datatonic is seeking a Pod Lead to bridge high-level technical leadership and hands-on engineering for production AI systems. You will mentor a pod of AI Engineers, design and deploy AI workloads, and evaluate system performance, while growing client relationships and driving delivery excellence in a hybrid work model.

You will own end-to-end delivery quality, be a key technical architect, and contribute to pre-sales and expansion opportunities across existing accounts.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in machine learning, data science, or applied AI, with leadership experience.
• Hands-on engineering and architectural expertise across the modern AI stack.
• Experience with generative AI, agents, RAG, tool-calling, and orchestration.
• Cloud & MLOps experience focusing on production deployment on cloud platforms.
• Proven ability to move from notebooks to measurable system quality.
• Client-facing consulting or pre-sales experience preferred.
• Excellent communication to diverse stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and operate production-grade AI systems.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a pod of AI engineers and data scientists.
• Own delivery quality, timelines, and scope across engagements.
• Identify growth opportunities within accounts and assist in pre-sales.

Skills

Proven Track Record

Hands-On & Architectural Expertise

Generative AI & Agents

Cloud & MLOps

Evaluation Mindset

Commercial & Client Savvy

Communication

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

scikit-learn

Vertex AI

BigQuery ML

Job description

Datatonic is seeking a Pod Lead to bridge high-level technical leadership and hands-on engineering for production AI systems. You will mentor a pod of AI Engineers, design and deploy AI workloads, and evaluate system performance, while growing client relationships and driving delivery excellence in a hybrid work model.

You will own end-to-end delivery quality, be a key technical architect, and contribute to pre-sales and expansion opportunities across existing accounts.