Dev Ops Lead – Virtual Assistant and Automation

bp; Sunbury-on-Thames; On-site; GBP 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Parental leave

Retirement benefits

Job summary

bp is seeking an IT&S senior leader to drive enterprise AI-enabled solutions across People & Culture priorities. You will own design, development, deployment, and governance, ensuring production readiness and scalable delivery.

You will partner with engineering, product, data science and external vendors to move AI initiatives from prototypes to robust, compliant production systems globally.

Qualifications

• Strong programming skills, Python preferred; Java or similar acceptable.
• Experience delivering enterprise AI-enabled solutions in production.
• Cloud proficiency with AWS, Azure or GCP; modern DevOps practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead production-grade AI applications and services.
• Ensure governance, security, and reliability across AI platforms.
• Manage external vendors and partnerships for scalable delivery.
• Drive roadmap and change across bp AI initiatives.

Skills

Python

Java

Cloud platforms

LLMs

RAG

Vector search

CI/CD

AI tools

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Haystack

Hugging Face

CrewAI

Job description

Job Description

Our purpose is to deliver energy to the world, today and tomorrow. For over 100 years, bp has focused on discovering, developing, and producing oil and gas in the nations where we operate. We are one of the few companies globally that can provide governments and customers with an integrated energy offering. Delivering our strategy sustainably is fundamental to achieving our ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner.

Entity

Technology

Job Family Group

IT&S Group

Role Purpose

• Lead the technical design, development and deployment of enterprise AI-enabled solutions aligned to People & Culture priorities
• Own service integrity, operational excellence, and governance across AI and digital people platforms
• Handle and partner with external vendors / configuration centres to deliver scalable, compliant solutions globally
• Act as a link between engineering, product, data science ensuring solutions move beyond prototypes into sustainable production

AI & Engineering Leadership

• Design, develop and maintain production-grade AI applications and services using modern engineering practices (cloud-native design, CI/CD, testing, observability).
• Define and implement reusable AI platforms and capabilities (e.g. conversational assistants, AI search, unstructured data processing, GenAI solutions).
• Lead architectural decisions, ensuring responsible AI, explain ability, security, and operational robustness are embedded by design.
• Evaluate and integrate LLMs, vector databases, RAG patterns, agent-based frameworks, and AI APIs into enterprise-ready solutions.
• Champion automation across the AI lifecycle from data ingestion to deployment and run.

Service, Delivery & Governance Ownership

• Be the point of accountability for system and solution integrity, ensuring incidents, risks and issues are led clearly and effectively.
• Define and maintain service catalogues, clarifying scope, ownership, and delivery expectations.
• Ensure solutions meet bp standards, compliance requirements (incl. SoX), and global consistency needs.
• Chair regular governance, operational risk, and retrospective sessions with partners and vendors.
• Ensure smooth transition of new solutions, enhancements, and AI capabilities into run-state operations.

Vendor & Partner Management

• Lead external vendors / configuration centres, ensuring capacity, capability, and delivery quality align with demand.
• Act as a key partner to Global Solution Owners, P&C leadership, technology teams, and business customers.
• Embed agile ways of working and continuous improvement practices across delivery teams.
• Translate complex technical and AI concepts into clear business insights and outcomes.

Inspiring change from incremental improvements through to transformations

• Support leadership in building a short & medium-term roadmap of technical change that supports the business and P&C strategies
• Leading a portfolio of change projects, ranging in size and complexity, in support of an agreed the roadmap
• Agree and handle annual budgets accordingly

Thought leadership in AI, VA and automation solutions

• Be a thought-leader in bp in the AI, VA and automation solutions through extensive external networking and continuous landscape analysis

Building partnerships

• Being a great partner with numerous internal senior leaders – primarily the respective members of the Core leadership team
• Securing alignment on priorities and leading their requirements / expectations on projects
• Building strategic relationships / partnerships with external partners where appropriate
• Assisting I&E in the operational oversight of our vendors / partners

Building a high-performing team

• Provide technical leadership, coaching and mentorship across engineering, data science, and solution teams.
• Inspiring and motivating a permanent team, and third-party project resources, to deliver great results
• Develop a safe, inclusive, high-performance environment where teams can innovate and deliver at pace.
• Establishing a team that find the optimal balance of WHAT they deliver and HOW they deliver
• Presents the highest level of professional individual contribution and imparts technical expertise to lower level team members;
• Advises and directs subordinates and project resources to help accomplish assignments using established guidelines, procedures and policies;
• Reviews and evaluates team members’ performance.

Essential Experience And Job Requirements

Actively working to develop capability in line with the P&C Capability Framework, with an equal blend of EQ, IQ and drive.

Technical Capability

• Confirmed experience in multiple organisational change management roles, including demonstrated skills in leadership alignment, partner identification and analysis
• Shown experience delivering enterprise-scale systems and AI-enabled solutions in production
• Strong programming skills (Python preferred; Java or similar acceptable)
• Solid experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP) and modern DevOps practices
• Experience integrating machine learning / GenAI models into real-world systems
• Experience with LLMs, RAG, vector search, conversational AI, or unstructured data pipelines
• Familiarity with AI tooling/frameworks (e.g. LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack, Hugging Face, CrewAI)
• Experience leading SaaS / cloud-based HR or enterprise platforms
• Skilled at using data and analytics to identify outcomes and improve decision making; e.g. process improvements and candidate experience improvements

Business Capability

• Strong partner management skills across business, technology, and vendor
• Customer focus – all decisions clearly aligned to customer strategy.
• Drives value-adding solutions - deeply integrated to ultimately improve business performance and disrupt, where necessary. Consistent track record of improving/adding customer value and taking things to the next level
• Externally orientated – aware of protocol and actively shares with, and learns from others
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-paced global environments

Leadership & EQ Capability

• Effective communication skills, flexible style able to deal with partners at all levels
• Strong influencing skills - able to gain acceptance to ideas from senior customers and comfortable in the space of challenge and difficult conversations
• Group mind-set - demonstrates a deep understanding of the value of, and ability to develop, high quality, trust-based relationships with colleagues across bp
• Is self-aware and skilled at handling impact on others
• Is actively aware of the morale of their team and works constructively to raise it
• Is politically astute and able to work successfully across organisational boundaries
• Acts with integrity; is an exemplar of living the LEs & V&Bs
• Consistent track record of successfully developing and inspiring others and engendering followership
• Cultural fluency - ability to operate successfully across cultural boundaries with sensitivity

Desirable Criteria

• Project management experience using both Agile and Waterfall methodologies
• Sound understanding of trends in the relevant process / technology areas
• Experience working within a global organisation, including using social media style tools to support communications and engagement across time zones
• Advanced at working collaboratively with internal and external partners

Please note that roles based out of SJS or Sunbury will move to Timber Square, Southwark, from Q4 2027

Why join us?

At bp, we support our people to grow in a diverse and exciting environment. We believe that our team is strengthened by diversity.

There are many aspects of our employees’ lives that are meaningful, so we offer benefits to enable your work to fit with your life. These benefits can include flexible working options, a generous paid parental leave policy, excellent retirement benefits, among others!

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and