AI Technical Lead

Lorien; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading recruiting firm is seeking an AI Technical Lead to drive the architecture and engineering of an AI Control Tower platform. The role involves developing robust observability frameworks and AI governance strategies while collaborating with cross-functional teams. The ideal candidate should have strong foundations in engineering, expertise in cloud-based AI ecosystems like AWS SageMaker, and proficiency in Python, SQL, and Java. This position offers a hybrid working model based in London or Edinburgh.

Qualifications

• Strong engineering foundations, with experience building scalable distributed systems or data platforms.
• Fluency in Python, SQL, Java, and modern data processing frameworks.
• Expertise in cloud-based AI/ML ecosystems, particularly AWS SageMaker (required).
• Proven experience developing monitoring frameworks, observability pipelines, and dashboards.
• Deep understanding of event-driven architectures and messaging systems (Kafka, Vert.x, or similar).
• Knowledge of security engineering, IAM principles, encryption, and cloud security controls.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, and engineering of the AI Control Tower platform.
• Build the core framework that enables AI observability and lifecycle management.
• Develop scalable, high-throughput data pipelines that track AI model performance.
• Ensure end-to-end observability across model development and deployment.
• Integrate with existing tools and systems across the bank.

Skills

Python

SQL

Java

AWS SageMaker

Monitoring frameworks

Event-driven architectures

Security engineering

CI/CD

Tools

Kafka

Open Telemetry

Job description

Hybrid Working - Edinburgh OR London - 2 days a week on site.

Lorien's leading banking client is looking for an AI Technical Lead to join them to drive the end‑to‑end build of this platform, shape its architecture, and partner with deep technical SMEs across the business to ensure our AI systems operate with the highest levels of performance, security, and responsible oversight

The client is investing in the next generation of AI capabilities, with safety, resilience, and trust at the core. We're creating a cutting‑edge AI Control Tower-a centralised platform and dashboard that monitors, governs, and optimises AI systems across the bank.

This is a hands-on, high-impact role at the intersection of AI governance, distributed systems, observability, and platform engineering.

This role is based in Edinburgh OR London.

This role will be Via Umbrella.

Working in a Hybrid Model of 2 days a week on site.

What You'll Do

• Lead the architecture, design, and engineering of the AI Control Tower platform.
• Build the core framework that enables AI observability, guardrails, performance monitoring, and lifecycle management.
• Shape the technical roadmap in partnership with product leaders, ensuring delivery against ambitious milestones.
• Establish engineering standards, patterns, and integration approaches used across the platform.
• Work closely with product managers to prioritise features, shape the roadmap, and ensure delivery against ambitious timeline
• Develop scalable, high‑throughput data pipelines and monitoring systems to track:
• AI model performance and drift
• Operational resilience and service health
• Security posture and policy adherence
• Guardrail compliance for ML and GenAI
• Aggregated risk indicators and governance metrics
• Ensure end‑to‑end observability across model development, deployment, and runtime operations.
• Embed secure-by-design principles, strong IAM practices, and regulatory compliance into the platform architecture.
• Ensure all AI systems are Partner with SMEs across data engineering, model risk, security, IMM (Independent Model Monitoring), and platform engineering.
• Partner with SMEs across data engineering, platform engineering, security, risk, and MLOps and Independent Model Monitoring (IMM).
• Integrate with existing tools and systems across the bank-model registries, feature stores, lineage services, governance controls, dashboards, and reporting pipelines.
• Work directly with technologies such as AWS SageMaker, Python, SQL, Java, event-driven systems, Open Telemetry, Kafka, and cloud-native monitoring stacks.
• Support governance of AI systems through transparent metrics, automated reporting, and integrated control mechanisms
• Identify and close gaps in runtime model governance, monitoring coverage, or control effectiveness.
• Champion standardisation of monitoring patterns, governance workflows, and reusable components.
• Drive adoption of automated guardrail checks, lineage capture, explainability integration, and resilience observability.

Bring thought leadership on Responsible AI, emerging standards, and new tooling

Key Skills and Experience

• Strong engineering foundations, with experience building scalable distributed systems or data platforms.
• Fluency in Python, SQL, Java, and modern data processing frameworks.
• Expertise in cloud-based AI/ML ecosystems, particularly AWS SageMaker (required).
• Proven experience developing monitoring frameworks, observability pipelines, and dashboards.
• Deep understanding of event-driven architectures and messaging systems (Kafka, Vert.x, or similar).
• Knowledge of security engineering, IAM principles, encryption, and cloud security controls. Experience with CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and automated testing for data/ML systems

Helpful Experience

• Strong engineering foundations, with experience building scalable distributed systems or data platforms.
• Fluency in Python, SQL, Java, and modern data processing frameworks.
• Expertise in cloud-based AI/ML ecosystems, particularly AWS SageMaker (required).
• Proven experience developing monitoring frameworks, observability pipelines, and dashboards.
• Deep understanding of event-driven architectures and messaging systems (Kafka, Vert.x, or similar).
• Knowledge of security engineering, IAM principles, encryption, and cloud security controls.
• Experience with CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and automated testing for data/ML systems.

IND_PC3

Guidant, Carbon60, Lorien & SRG - The Impellam Group Portfolio are acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.