Principal AI Engineer

Royal London; City of Edinburgh; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading mutual life and pensions company is seeking a Principal AI Engineer to provide technical leadership across AI solutions. This role, based in Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Wilmslow, focuses on building, deploying, and overseeing high-performing AI solutions. The ideal candidate should possess deep expertise in AI/ML solution development, lead innovation efforts, and guide a team of engineers to meet business needs through effective AI applications. Competitive benefits are included, such as a generous pension scheme and extensive annual leave.

Benefits

28 days annual leave

Up to 14% employer matching pension scheme

Private medical insurance

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in AI/ML solution development.
• Strong understanding of AI model evaluation.
• Proven ability to design and implement end-to-end AI architectures.

Responsibilities

• Act as the lead technical authority for new AI solutions.
• Provide technical leadership for innovation efforts.
• Develop, embed, and maintain AI engineering development standards.

Skills

AI/ML solution development

Large language models

AI model evaluation

End-to-end AI architectures

Python

AI orchestration frameworks

Experiment tracking

Tools

MLFlow

Microsoft Azure

Vector databases

Job description

Job Title: Principal AI Engineer

Contract Type: Permanent

Role Grade: D

Location: Edinburgh or Glasgow or Alderley Park (Wilmslow)

Working Style: Hybrid 50% home/office based

We have a fantastic opportunity for a Principal AI Engineer to join our Group Data & AI Office Team (GDO). The GDO function is responsible for enhancing the effectiveness of data and AI use across Royal London. Our strategy at Royal London is to become an insight-led modern mutual, growing sustainably through deepening customer relationships. We want to use data, analytics and AI to offer timely, relevant, personalised guidance and support to deepen customer relationships and ultimately, increase their financial resilience.

The Principal AI Engineer is the lead technical authority within the Data & AI Solutions Team, responsible for providing technical leadership across all in-house and third‑party embedded AI applications. The role ensures the design, development, and deployment of scalable, secure, and high‑performing AI solutions. The Principal AI Engineer leads a team of AI Solution Engineers and mentors junior engineers, troubleshoots complex issues, and shapes the AI solution architecture and strategy to align with business goals.

The purpose of the Data & AI Solutions Team is to create business value through the delivery of specific Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence projects and initiatives for the Group. These initiatives will create insights, answer key business questions, solve business problems and support decision‑making at all levels of the organisation. The team will also act as a Centre‑of‑Excellence in Analytics and AI, helping to mature the Group’s capability in these areas and our ambition to become data‑led and AI‑enabled.

More about the role:

• Act as the lead technical authority for new AI solutions, overseeing and assuring engineering work to ensure solutions deliver desired functionality and operate within defined parameters and principles.
• Provide technical leadership for innovation efforts, proving the efficacy of new technologies and techniques.
• Run an effective R&D process, including horizon scanning and leveraging internal, external, and partner signals.
• Develop, embed, and maintain AI engineering development standards to ensure a standardised, high‑quality, reusable, and well‑documented codebase.
• Champion best practices in AI engineering, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Advise GEC and Board on AI market trends and development and our response to them.
• Support the development of the group Data and AI Strategy.
• Create and assure AI designs for in‑house built solutions, ensuring alignment with business goals and technical standards.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to define solution architectures that are scalable, maintainable and secure.
• Lead a team of highly motivated, engaged and skilled AI Solution Engineers.
• Provide guidance on modern AI engineering practices, including RAG, multi‑agent orchestration, and CI/CD for AI.

More about you:

• Deep expertise in AI/ML solution development, including large language models, deep learning, and AI / LLMOps.
• Strong understanding of AI model evaluation, including bias mitigation and explainability.
• Proven ability to design and implement end‑to‑end AI architectures: data pipelines, model training, deployment, and monitoring.

• Experience leading the design of multi‑agent AI frameworks and retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) architectures.
• Expertise with AI orchestration frameworks (LangChain, Semantic Kernel) and model integration protocols (e.g. Model Context Protocol).
• Expertise with vector databases (FAISS, Chroma, Pinecone, Weaviate).

• Experience with experiment tracking and model registry tooling e.g MLFlow.
• Advanced proficiency with Cloud AI Platforms: Microsoft Azure (including Azure AI Foundry), AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI, and Databricks.
• Knowledge of cloud security, data privacy, and enterprise integration best practices.
• Strong software engineering background (Python, C#, or similar) for scalable, production‑grade AI systems.

• Experience with ML tooling (MLFlow for experiment tracking and model registry).
• Expertise with open‑source AI libraries (Hugging Face, LangChain, Semantic Kernel).
• Strong Git‑based collaboration, automated testing, and code quality practices.

• Familiarity with AI governance, responsible AI, and UK regulatory principles (safety, transparency, fairness, accountability).
• Knowledge of cloud security, data privacy, and enterprise integration best practices.

If you think you would be a great fit for our team at Royal London but don't meet all the requirements of the role, please get in touch as your application will still be considered.

About Royal London

We're the UK's largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, offering protection, long‑term savings and asset management products and services.

Our People Promise to our colleagues is that we will all work somewhere inclusive, responsible, enjoyable and fulfilling. This is underpinned by our Spirit of Royal London values; Empowered, Trustworthy, Collaborate, Achieve.

We've always been proud to reward employees by offering great workplace benefits such as 28 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays, an up to 14% employer matching pension scheme and private medical insurance. You can see all our benefits here - Our Benefits

Inclusion, diversity and belonging

We're an Inclusive employer. We celebrate and value different backgrounds and cultures across Royal London. Our diverse people and perspectives give us a range of skills which are recognised and respected - whatever their background.