Senior Principal Applied AI Engineer

Aviva plc; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 135,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical

Pension scheme

Volunteer days

Retail discounts

Share plan

Flexible working

Job summary

Aviva is seeking a Senior Principal Applied AI Engineer to shape the long-term AI strategy and deliver scalable, production-grade AI at enterprise scale. You will act as the senior technical authority for applied AI, aligning technology decisions with regulatory expectations and business outcomes across Technology, Data, Risk and Security.

Based in London or other locations, you will lead multi-agent AI architectures, establish standards, mentor teams and partner with executives to translate

Qualifications

• Extensive experience leading strategy, architecture, delivery and operation of complex applied AI, ML systems at enterprise scale.
• Technical authority with proven track record setting direction and influencing standards across teams.
• Deep Python software engineering expertise enabling scalability, resilience and security.
• Experience partnering with senior leaders translating complex tech into business outcomes.
• Ability to lead safe, compliant AI adoption in regulated environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and delivery of multi-agent AI systems for high-value use cases.
• Define engineering standards across orchestration, MCP integration, memory design, fine-tuning, evaluation frameworks, multimodal systems.
• Build reusable AI capabilities including agent tools, MCP servers, skills.
• Establish quality, safety and governance standards for production AI.
• Lead shift to spec-driven development in the organisation.
• Provide technical leadership, architecture reviews and mentoring.
• Partner with business, product and architecture teams to translate AI opportunities into scalable solutions.
• Grow Applied AI Engineering capability through hiring, coaching and community leadership.

Skills

AI leadership

Architecture strategy

Python

Enterprise-scale AI

Regulated environment

Stakeholder engagement

Job description

Senior Principal Applied AI Engineer

Location: London, Birmingham, Bristol, Eastleigh, Glasgow, Leatherhead, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Perth, Sheffield, Worthing or York

London: Salary from £160K + bonus + excellent benefits

National: Salary from £135K + bonus + excellent benefits

Build AI that matters.

AI is already making a difference across Aviva, helping colleagues and customers through areas such as claims summarisation, medical underwriting, customer service and fraud detection.

As a Senior Principal Applied AI Engineer, you'll help design and deliver the next generation of AI solutions while influencing the standards, governance and engineering capabilities that support AI at scale.

Technology and AI are central to Aviva's strategy. Today, we serve over 25 million customers globally, support 7.4 million registered My Aviva users and continue to invest in the technology foundations that enable innovation at scale. With 70% of UK IT applications now cloud-based, we're creating the platform for the next phase of AI adoption across the business.

If you're excited by solving complex technical problems, leading through expertise and building production-grade AI at enterprise scale, we'd love to hear from you.

A bit about the job

As a Senior Principal Applied AI Engineer, you will hold accountability for the long-term technical vision, architectural integrity, and operational resilience of critical AI platforms and solutions.

You will act as the senior technical authority for applied AI engineering, ensuring that strategic technology decisions support business objectives, regulatory expectations, and customer outcomes.

You will work closely with senior leaders across Technology, Data, Risk, Security, and the wider business to shape investment priorities, influence enterprise strategy, and ensure the successful adoption of AI capabilities across Aviva.

Through your leadership, you will create the conditions for engineering teams to deliver high-quality, scalable, and trustworthy AI solutions with confidence.

You’ll be responsible for :

• leading the architecture and delivery of multi-agent AI systems for high-value business use cases.
• defining engineering standards across orchestration architectures, context engineering, MCP integration, memory design, fine-tuning, evaluation frameworks and multimodal systems.
• building reusable AI capabilities including agent tools, MCP servers, skills and shared engineering assets.
• establishing quality, safety and governance standards for production AI systems.
• leading the shift to spec-driven development in the organisation.
• providing technical leadership, architecture reviews and mentoring.
• partnering with business, product and architecture teams to translate AI opportunities into scalable solutions.
• helping grow the Applied AI Engineering capability through hiring, coaching and community leadership.

Skills and experience we are looking for

• Extensive experience leading the strategy, architecture, delivery, and operation of complex applied AI, machine learning, or LLM-powered systems at enterprise scale, with accountability for business-critical outcomes.
• Recognised technical authority with a proven track record of setting technology direction, making high-impact architectural decisions, and influencing engineering standards across multiple teams, functions, or domains.
• Deep expertise in software engineering and Python, with the ability to drive engineering excellence, scalability, resilience, security, and operational maturity across large-scale AI platforms.
• Strong experience partnering with senior leaders and executive stakeholders, translating complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes, influencing investment decisions, and aligning diverse groups behind a shared vision.
• Proven ability to lead the safe and responsible adoption of AI in regulated environments, balancing innovation with governance, risk management, compliance, and customer trust

Why Aviva:

This is an opportunity to help build AI in a highly trusted environment, where customer outcomes, governance and responsible innovation matter.

You'll join a business with proven AI capability, significant digital reach, modern technology foundations and the ambition to scale AI across the organisation.

Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to influence how AI is engineered, governed and adopted across Aviva, while staying close to the technology itself.

Whatyou’llget for this role:

Our purpose –with you today, for a better tomorrow–is a promise we make to our colleagues too. And one of the ways we live up to that promise is by investing in you. We have so much to offer when it comes to being an Aviva colleague:

• Salary:London: Salary from £160K + bonus + excellent benefits National: Salary from £135K + bonus + excellent benefits (depending on location, skills, experience, and qualifications)
• Bonus opportunity – 25% of annual salary Actual amount depends on your performance and Aviva’s.
• Generouspensionscheme eg if you put in 8%, Aviva adds 14%.
• 29 daysholidayplus bank holidays, with theoptionto buy or sell up to 5 days
• Aviva-funded Private Medical Benefitto help you get expert support when you need it
• Up to 40%discount on Aviva products, and other retailer discounts
• Up to £1,200 of free Aviva shares per year through ourMatching Share PlanandSave As You Earnscheme
• Brilliantlysupportive policiesincluding parental and carer’s leave
• Flexible benefitsto suit you, includingsustainability optionssuch as cycle to work.

• Make a difference, be part of our Aviva Communities and use your 3 paid volunteering days to help others

• We take your wellbeing seriously with lots of support and tools

Take a look to learn more. Put a salary into this calculator to see what your total Aviva Reward could be.

Aviva is for everyone:

We’reinclusive and welcome everyone– we want applications from all backgrounds and experiences. Excited but not sure you tick every box? Even if youdon’t, we wouldstill encourage you to apply. We also consider all forms of flexible working, including part time and job shares.

We flex locations,hoursand working patterns to suit our customers, business, and you. Most of our people are smart working – spending at least 50% of their time in our offices every week - combining the benefits of flexibility, with time together with colleagues.

To find out more about working at Aviva take a look here