Forward-Deployed AI Engineer & Tech Lead (UK)

EY; Southampton; On-site; GBP 95,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

EY is seeking an experienced Forward Deployed AI Engineer to lead hands-on AI development while guiding junior engineers. The role includes designing AI agents, automation tools, and cloud-native platforms, with technical oversight across projects.

You will shape deliverables, ensure quality, and contribute to governance, security, and risk assessment. This leadership position combines architecture, coding, and strategic delivery across UK offices.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and delivering AI-enabled solutions across business domains.
• Proven ability to lead multidisciplinary teams and mentor juniors.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures for AI workloads.
• Ability to balance low-code and traditional development approaches.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop AI agents and automation tools to solve complex problems.
• Architect AI solutions across multiple projects and portfolios, including orchestration layers.
• Decide between low-code and pro-code approaches for delivery.
• Design cloud native solutions as the platform for AI offerings and integrate new AI features.
• Provide technical oversight and QA of projects and of team members’ work.
• Set engineering standards and review the code and solutions produced by the team.
• Translate business problems into deliverable technical scope with effort/feasibility assessments.
• Own governance and end-to-end setup, including AI risk assessment and data security controls.

Skills

AI engineering

Leadership

Cloud architectures

Low-code / pro-code

Tools

Cloud platforms

AI orchestration

Security tooling

Job description

EY is seeking an experienced Forward Deployed AI Engineer to lead hands-on AI development while guiding junior engineers. The role includes designing AI agents, automation tools, and cloud-native platforms, with technical oversight across projects.

You will shape deliverables, ensure quality, and contribute to governance, security, and risk assessment. This leadership position combines architecture, coding, and strategic delivery across UK offices.