Lead Engineer, AI Platform

FashionUnited Group; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Pandora is seeking a Lead AI Platform Engineer to drive the design, security, and scaling of its AI platform. You will lead architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and deliver production-grade AI services across a cloud-native environment.

You'll own IaC governance, work with GAI gateways, and integrate LLM APIs and Databricks pipelines. This senior role requires strong backend skills, Kubernetes expertise, and experience leading AI platform teams.

Qualifications

• Relevant background in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field.
• Proven experience building and operating AI/ML platform services or LLM-based integrations in production.

Responsibilities

• Serve as technical lead for the AI platform engineering team; set implementation direction, standards, and decisions.
• Lead code reviews and architecture discussions; ensure quality, testing, documentation, observability and security hardening.
• Mentor engineers and invest in technical growth of team members.
• Design, build, and operate scalable AI platform components exposing AI/ML capabilities.
• Own Terraform IaC standards for reproducible Azure infrastructure.

Skills

Backend engineering

Kubernetes

Terraform/IaC

Network architecture

MLflow governance

Databricks/ML pipelines

PostgreSQL

LLM APIs

Agentic development

Python

Education

CS/CE degree

Tools

Docker

Azure App Services

Terraform

Databricks

MLflow

Job description

Ready to build the AI engine behind the world's largest jewellery brand?

As Lead AI Platform Engineer, you will be the technical force behind Pandora's AI platform, shaping how AI systems are built, scaled, and secured across the business. Combining deep hands‑on engineering expertise with strong technical leadership, you will drive architectural excellence, elevate engineering standards, and deliver reliable, production‑ready AI solutions at scale.

Your Key Responsibilities Will Be To

Technical Leadership

• Serve as the technical lead for the AI platform engineering team — setting the implementation direction, defining coding standards, and making key technical decisions that govern how the platform is built and evolved.
• Lead code reviews and drive architecture discussions, ensuring engineering decisions are well‑reasoned, documented, and aligned with the broader platform strategy — championing engineering standards across code quality, testing practices, documentation, observability, and security hardening.
• Act as a technical mentor and go‑to resource for all engineers — sharing knowledge, unblocking complex problems, and actively investing in the technical growth of both senior and junior team members.
• Design, build, and operate scalable, high‑performance services and platform components that expose AI/ML capabilities across Pandora's digital ecosystem.
• Own and define the standards and governance for Terraform‑based Infrastructure as Code (IaC) — ensuring all Azure infrastructure is reproducible, auditable, and securely configured.
• Apply strong network architecture knowledge to design and govern secure connectivity between platform services, AI gateways, and external integrations, including VNet, private endpoints, NSGs, and ingress/egress controls, while collaborating with security stakeholders to uphold the platform's overall security posture.
• Leverage Databricks for big data processing, feature engineering, and ML pipeline support.

AI Services & Agentic Development

• Integrate and operationalise AI services including LLM APIs, vector search, RAG pipelines, embeddings, and multi‑layer caching into platform‑level services.
• Lead the agentic code development practice: architecting autonomous execution loops that enable tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot to safely write, test, and self‑correct software within isolated sandboxes.
• Own MLflow governance standards for experiment tracking, model versioning, and ML lifecycle management across the team.
• Configure and manage AI gateways to ensure secure, scalable, and governed access to AI capabilities at production scale.

CI/CD & Reliability

• Define and govern the CI/CD standards for the AI platform team — establishing quality gates, testing frameworks, deployment patterns, and pipeline architecture that all engineers build to.
• Ensure performance, availability, and maintainability of platform services in production; handle incidents in a timely manner to minimise Mean Time to Contain (MTTC).

We Love That You Will Bring

Education & Experience

• Relevant background from Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field with experience in backend or platform engineering, with at least 2 years operating in a technical leadership capacity within AI or cloud‑native platform teams.
• Proven experience building and operating AI/ML platform services or LLM‑based integrations in a production environment.

Technical Skills

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals: service architecture, REST API design, performance optimisation, and production reliability by design and monitoring, with hands‑on proficiency in Python.
• Deep Kubernetes expertise — workload configuration, networking, security policy design, and production debugging; hands‑on Docker and Azure App Services.
• Expert‑level Terraform and IaC ownership — defining standards, patterns, and governance for cloud infrastructure on Azure.
• Strong network architecture and configuration skills, including Azure networking concepts (VNet, NSG, private endpoints, DNS, ingress/egress).
• MLflow governance, Databricks for ML pipeline integration, and experience with ML serving infrastructure, LLM APIs, prompt integration, and multi‑layer caching.
• Proficiency in PostgreSQL and experience in configuring AI gateways for centralized AI governance
• Experience in agentic code development practice, harness engineering and spec‑driven development is a plus.

Soft Skills

Ideally you are a trusted technical leader who combines strong engineering expertise with clear thinking and a collaborative approach to drive sound decisions, communicate complex platform, security, and architecture topics in a business‑friendly way, and foster team growth. Brings a proactive and curious mindset, with a passion for emerging AI technologies balanced by a pragmatic focus on execution and delivery.

About the Team

You will be part of Pandora's AI Platform team within AI CoE at Digital & Analytics & AI — a passionate, forward‑thinking group dedicated to building the infrastructure and services that bring AI to life across the business. The team works at the intersection of data science, machine learning, cloud engineering, and product development, collaborating closely with ML Engineers, Data Scientists, AI Architects, and Product stakeholders.

You will report to the AI Platform Manager and serve as the senior technical voice that shapes how the platform is designed, secured, and evolved — influencing both what gets built and how it gets built.

About Pandora

Pandora is the world's largest jewellery brand, specialising in the design, crafting and marketing of accessible luxury jewellery made from high‑quality materials. Each piece is created to inspire self‑expression, allowing people to share their stories and passions through meaningful jewellery. Pandora jewellery is sold in more than 100 countries through 7,000 points of sale, including more than 2,800 concept stores.

Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Pandora employs around 39,000 people worldwide and crafts its jewellery with 100% recycled silver and gold. Pandora is committed to leadership in sustainability and has set out to halve greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain by 2030. Pandora is listed on the Nasdaq Copenhagen stock exchange and generated revenue of DKK 32.5 billion (EUR 4.4 billion) in 2025.

Recognised by the Financial Times as one of Europe's Best Workplaces and ranked #1 among Danish companies, Pandora is committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace.

Did We Get Your Attention?

You can also read more about Pandora on our corporate site www.pandoragroup.com

Want to know more about working at PANDORA?

England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland