Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer: AI-Driven Delivery Leader

Vanguard; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Vanguard's Global Investment & Finance Systems (GIFS) team in the UK is seeking a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer to partner with business and deliver production-ready solutions across the GIFS SDLC. You will mentor engineers, set technical direction, and drive opportunities from experimentation to production, working with investment professionals and quantitative researchers in a hybrid UK role.

The role requires deep software and data engineering expertise, strong quantitative background, and

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant software, data, quantitative, or analytics engineering experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading technical workstreams and delivering production‑quality solutions.
• Experience supporting investment management, quantitative research, or related front‑office analytical functions.

Responsibilities

• Partner across UK Investment Management Group to shape, test, and prioritize high‑value quantitative and analytical opportunities.
• Translate ambiguous investment challenges into actionable technical opportunities across software, data, AI, machine learning, optimization.
• Personally architect, build, and validate solutions from rapid experimentation through MVP and initial production deployment.
• Lead the productionalisation of research code, quantitative models, analytical tools, and high‑ or critical‑risk EUCTs, strengthening testing, reproducibility, performance, data lineage, and operational support.
• Establish scalable engineering patterns for AI‑enabled solutions, including human‑in‑the‑loop controls, reusable components, and evaluation methods addressing quality, safety, latency, cost, and readiness.
• Exercise senior technical judgment with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Platform, Security, and enterprise governance teams on whether capabilities should be refined, elevated, transitioned, reused, or retired.
• Lead through hands‑on delivery by setting technical direction, developing critical components, mentoring engineers, and resolving complex delivery barriers.
• Translate successful UK engagements into reusable code, evaluation methods, and engineering patterns, working with Innovation and Emerging Technology to bring emerging capabilities into local delivery and share lessons across GIFS.

Skills

Python

Data engineering

Cloud platforms

AI and machine learning

Optimization

Modern application development

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

CI/CD

Logging

Source control

Job description

Vanguard's Global Investment & Finance Systems (GIFS) team in the UK is seeking a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer to partner with business and deliver production-ready solutions across the GIFS SDLC. You will mentor engineers, set technical direction, and drive opportunities from experimentation to production, working with investment professionals and quantitative researchers in a hybrid UK role.

The role requires deep software and data engineering expertise, strong quantitative background, and