AI Program Lead

RightShip; Greater London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A maritime industry leader is seeking an AI Program Lead to drive AI initiatives. The ideal candidate will have over 10 years of software engineering or data science experience, including a solid background in AI/ML solutions. Responsibilities include defining AI vision, collaborating with product leadership, and overseeing project delivery. This role offers a competitive salary, professional development opportunities, and an inclusive workplace culture focused on safety and sustainability.

Benefits

Competitive salary

Professional development opportunities

Healthy Living Allowance

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering or data science, including 3+ years building and deploying AI/ML solutions.
• Strong experience in collaborating with Engineering and Data teams.
• Familiarity with model deployment, monitoring, and workflows.

Responsibilities

• Define the AI program vision and manage the lifecycle of AI initiatives.
• Partner with Product Managers to ensure AI solutions meet customer needs.
• Lead and mentor a team of AI engineers.

Skills

Software engineering

Data science

AI/ML solutions

Leadership

Communication

Team management

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, AI/ML, or related technical field

Tools

Python

MLOps

Job description

RightShip is the world’s biggest third party maritime due diligence organization, providing expertise in global safety, sustainability and social responsibility best practices.

We bring together years of industry expertise with the output from analytics and large data sets to provide our safety and environmental scoring systems, recommendations and consultancy services.

Using leading data and technology, we aim to set new benchmarks in environmental protection. We support global initiatives and action influencing practical and impactful change, enabling “win‑win” for business and the environment.

What we offer

We offer a place where you know you are contributing to an organization who are constantly working to ensure ships are safe as possible so that crew and cargo are protected. We are passionate about maritime efficiency, safety and sustainability practices. We offer generous rewards. Our base salary is competitive, we support employee wellbeing and provide our employees with a Healthy Living Allowance and our annual incentive scheme is awesome. We have some great talent who are happy to share their experience and skills to help you on your way and we are committed to professional development to make sure your career keeps growing while you’re working with us.

What makes RightShip a great place to work at:

RightShip is an equal opportunity employer, and we champion diversity. Our teams are composed of individuals from different geographies, cultures, religions, ethnicities, races, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, and generations. We believe that a diversity of experiences makes us stronger—as individuals, as communities and as an organization.

RightShip is accelerating its use of AI across our platform and products. As we expand our AI capabilities, we are seeking an experienced AI Program Lead to drive strategic AI initiatives, guide experimentation, and partner closely with Product, Engineering, and SME functions.

This role is ideal for someone with strong hands‑on AI expertise, proven experience delivering AI solutions into production, and the ability to orchestrate cross‑functional work that turns ideas into customer‑facing innovation. You will be responsible for shaping our AI program roadmap, validating opportunities, enabling teams, and ensuring delivery of high‑impact AI improvements across the product suite.

Key Responsibilities

AI Strategy & Program Leadership

• Collaborate with product leadership to define the AI program vision, success metrics, and prioritised roadmap.
• Identify high‑value AI opportunities across the RightShip platform, assessing feasibility, complexity, and impact.
• Manage the end‑to‑end lifecycle of AI initiatives, from discovery and experimentation through delivery and scaling.
• Coordinate cross‑functional execution involving AI engineers, data scientists, product managers, SMEs, and design.
• Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and responsible AI.

Cross‑Functional Product & Delivery Leadership

• Partner with Product Managers from discovery through delivery, ensuring AI solutions align with real customer needs.
• Actively drive AI integration into RightShip products, ensuring solution fit, user impact, and seamless experience.
• Translate business problems into clear AI opportunities, with structured evaluation, success metrics, and value hypotheses.

Technical Guidance & AI Team Leadership

• Lead and mentor a team of AI engineers and specialists, guiding experimentation, prioritisation, and technical direction.
• Establish strong engineering practices for rapid prototyping, model evaluation, and iteration.
• Support capability development, knowledge sharing, and continuous upskilling within the AI team.
• Drive hands‑on experimentation when required (prototyping, prompt engineering, testing RAG patterns, evaluating fine‑tuning opportunities).

Execution & Delivery Management

• Establish repeatable processes for experiment tracking, model reviews, and deployment checkpoints.
• Facilitate alignment between Product, Engineering, and AI teams to ensure timely and coherent delivery.
• Guide the design of human‑in‑the‑loop workflows, annotation needs, and model feedback loops.

Stakeholder Engagement & Change Enablement

• Work closely with SMEs to transform domain knowledge into model‑ready guidance, evaluation rubrics, and test scenarios.
• Communicate AI program outcomes and updates to senior leadership, ensuring clarity of progress, risks, and value delivery.
• Enable internal adoption of new AI features, including training for product, commercial, and operations teams.
• Lead structured AI discovery processes that help teams validate ideas quickly and safely.
• Promote a culture of experimentation, learning, and continuous improvement across squads.
• Track industry trends in language models, multimodal AI, evaluation tooling, and model optimisation relevant to RightShip.

Qualifications, Skills & Experience

• 10+ years in software engineering or data science, including 3+ years building and deploying AI/ML solutions.
• 4+ years leading or managing AI engineers or technical teams.
• Strong experience collaborating with Engineering and Data teams on architecture, data pipelines, deployment, and monitoring.
• Strong practical understanding of LLMs, embeddings, supervised ML, RAG, and evaluation methods.
• Familiarity with MLOps: model deployment, monitoring, guardrails, CI/CD for ML, and data workflows.
• Ability to review and challenge AI designs, experiments, and metrics with technical credibility.
• Excellent communicator able to present, influence, and gain buy‑in from senior leadership and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Proven ability to align, negotiate, and manage expectations across cross‑functional teams.
• Strong leadership in coaching, mentoring, and growing AI talent.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, AI/ML, or related technical field.
• Master’s degree is beneficial but not required.

RightShip is an Equal Opportunity Employer and values diversity, enables access and promotes inclusion in our workplace. You must have the right to live and work in this location to apply for this job.