Financial Wellbeing Machine Learning and AI Lead Engineer

Lloyds Bank plc; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 93,000 - 109,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension up to 15%

Bonus

Share schemes

Discounts

30 days holiday

Wellbeing initiatives

Parental leave

Job summary

Lloyds Banking Group in Manchester seeks a Senior Lead Data Scientist and AI & Machine Learning Engineer to shape and deliver AI solutions for the Financial Wellbeing Platform. You will lead predictive and generative AI initiatives, drive data-driven insights, and define capability roadmaps for enterprise-scale applications.

You will provide technical and people leadership, guiding multi-team efforts and ensuring high-quality, scalable AI products while working in a hybrid pattern with onsite

Qualifications

• Extensive experience developing, tuning and evaluating ML models in production.
• Deep understanding of modern ML techniques, deployment, monitoring and optimisation.
• Strong capability building production‑ready services using Python, SQL, APIs, microservices.
• Experience providing technical leadership across complex, multi‑team deliveries.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts and build partnerships with stakeholders.
• Experience with agentic AI, LLMs, and retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development and optimisation of AI and machine learning solutions that address complex business challenges.
• Own delivery across the end-to-end AI lifecycle, from experimentation to deployment and monitoring.
• Provide technical leadership across large, multi‑team programmes.
• Partner with product, engineering, data and business teams to deliver scalable AI products.
• Embed responsible AI, governance and risk management practices.
• Coach and develop data scientists and AI engineers across the organisation.

Skills

Data Science

Machine Learning

Software Engineering

Leadership

Critical Thinking

Stakeholder Management

Tools

Python

SQL

APIs

Event-driven architectures

Microservices

Vertex AI Agent Builder

Agentspace

LangGraph

Azure

AWS

Job description

End Date: Wednesday 02 September 2026

Salary: £92,701 - £109,060

We support flexible working –

Flexible Working Options: Hybrid Working, Job Share

Job Description Summary

Job Description

As a Senior Lead Machine Learning & AI Engineer within the Financial Wellbeing Platform, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping and delivering ground breaking AI solutions that solve complex business challenges for our Financial Resiliency & Support teams. From predictive and generative AI to agentic systems, you’ll lead initiatives that transform digital experiences, automate processes, and unlock data-driven insights for colleagues and clients. You’ll provide technical and people leadership, define our capability roadmap, and ensure the delivery of high-quality, scalable models and solutions.

Job Details

Job Title: Senior Lead Data Scientist and AI & Machine Learning Engineer

Salary: £92,701 - £108,000

Location(s): Manchester

Hours: Full Time

Working Pattern: Our work style is hybrid, which involves spending at least two days per week, or 40% of your time, at one of our office sites.

About this opportunity

Do you want to shape how AI, machine learning and agentic technologies improve the financial wellbeing of millions of customers? As a Senior Lead Data Scientist and AI & Machine Learning Engineer within our Financial Wellbeing Platform, you'll play a leading role in defining and delivering innovative AI solutions that help colleagues and customers make better financial decisions. You'll work across predictive AI, generative AI and intelligent agent technologies, combining deep technical expertise with strategic leadership to deliver solutions safely, responsibly and at scale! You'll help define our AI capability roadmap, influence technical direction across multiple teams and support the growth of data science and AI engineering capability across the Platform!

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development and optimisation of AI and machine learning solutions that address complex business challenges.


• Own delivery across the end-to-end AI lifecycle, from experimentation and model development through to deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement.


• Provide technical leadership across large, multi-team programmes, helping teams make sound engineering and architectural decisions.


• Partner with product, engineering, data and business teams to deliver scalable AI-powered products and services.


• Embed responsible AI, governance and risk management practices throughout development and deployment activities.


• Coach and develop data scientists and AI engineers, supporting capability growth and knowledge sharing across the wider organisation.

Why Lloyds Banking Group?

Like the modern Britain we serve, we’re evolving. Investing in our people, data and technology to transform how we support customers and communities. We’re growing our AI and machine learning capability to help shape the future of financial services. This is an opportunity to work with talented colleagues, solve meaningful problems and influence how AI is applied at enterprise scale. You'll join a collaborative environment where learning, innovation and continuous improvement are encouraged, and where you'll have the opportunity to make a genuine impact through your work.

What you’ll need

We’re looking for someone who combines advanced data science expertise with software engineering capability and technical leadership experience. Specifically, we’re interested in:

• Data Science: Extensive experience developing, tuning and evaluating machine learning models and AI solutions in production environments.


• Machine Learning: Deep understanding of modern machine learning techniques, model deployment, monitoring and optimisation practices.


• Software Engineering: Strong capability building production‑ready services using Python, SQL and modern engineering practices, including APIs, event‑driven architectures and microservices.


• Technology Leadership: Experience providing technical leadership across complex, multi‑team deliveries, influencing strategy and enabling high‑quality outcomes.


• Critical Thinking: Ability to solve complex problems, analyse information effectively and make informed decisions in ambiguous environments.


• Stakeholder Management: Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly and build effective partnerships across engineering, product and business stakeholders.

These requirements reflect the role’s focus on AI delivery, technical leadership, software engineering, machine learning and enterprise‑scale data science capability. And any experience of this would be really useful.

• Building agentic AI solutions, LLM‑powered applications and retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) architectures.


• Experience with Vertex AI Agent Builder, Agentspace, LangGraph or multi‑agent frameworks.


• Knowledge of responsible AI, model governance and risk management practices within regulated environments.


• Experience working within financial services or other highly regulated industries.


• Exposure to Azure, AWS or multi‑cloud environments.


• Building technical communities, mentoring programmes or engineering guilds.

About working for us

Our ambition is to be the leading UK business for diversity, equity and inclusion, supporting our customers, colleagues and communities. We’re committed to creating an environment where everyone can thrive, learn and develop. We welcome applications from people with a broad range of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. We provide reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process and in the workplace to reduce or remove barriers. As a Disability Confident Leader, we guarantee interviews for a fair and proportionate number of applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the role and have a disability, long‑term health condition or neuro‑divergent condition through the Disability Confident Scheme. If you need any adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.

Benefits

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%


• An annual performance‑related bonus


• Share schemes including free shares


• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping


• 30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top


• A range of wellbeing initiatives


• Generous parental leave policies

Ready for a career where you can help shape the future of AI in financial services while learning, growing and making a positive impact?

About Lloyds Banking Group

At Lloyds Banking Group, we’re driven by a clear purpose; to help Britain prosper. Across the Group, our colleagues are focused on making a difference to customers, businesses and communities. With us you’ll have a key role to play in shaping the financial services of the future, whilst the scale and reach of our Group means you’ll have many opportunities to learn, grow and develop.

We keep your data safe. So, we’ll only ever ask you to provide confidential or sensitive information once you have formally been invited along to an interview or accepted a verbal offer to join us which is when we run our background checks. We’ll always explain what we need and why, with any request coming from a trusted Lloyds Banking Group person. We’re focused on creating a values‑led culture and are committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the customers and communities we serve. Together we’re building a truly inclusive workplace where all of our colleagues have the opportunity to make a real difference.