Technical Lead - AI Engineering & Architecture

Imperial; United States; Remote; USD 119,000 - 172,000; Full time

Job summary

Imperial is seeking a highly experienced Technical Lead for AI Engineering & Architecture. The role combines architecture, hands-on engineering, AI strategy, mentoring, and technical leadership across greenfield and legacy projects.

You will shape roadmaps, standards, and governance while hands-on coding and guiding teams. Reporting to Software Development Manager, this remote UK position emphasises scalable architecture, secure development, and AI-enabled productivity across the product

Qualifications

• Experience with secure coding, vulnerability remediation, and performance optimisation.
• Hands-on software engineering with recent production coding experience.
• Strong proficiency in enterprise languages (C#, Java) and cloud platforms (Azure).
• Demonstrated experience driving AI-assisted development in real engineering teams, including prompt engineering and governance.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the technical architecture across all products.
• Lead architectural decision-making and technical direction.
• Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with business needs.
• Establish engineering standards and best practices; improve consistency across teams.
• Remain actively involved in coding and technical delivery; contribute to architecture and reviews.
• Lead the adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices and governance.

Skills

Secure coding

AI-assisted development

Hands-on coding

Architectural leadership

Cloud platforms (Azure)

Mentoring

Tools

Azure

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Job Summary:

Technical Lead – AI Engineering & Architecture
Reports to: Software Development Manager

Remote – UK

About the Role

We are looking for a highly experienced and hands-on Technical Lead to provide senior technical leadership across the organisation.

This is not a traditional management role focused only on people leadership or delivery coordination. We are looking for someone who still enjoys coding, solving technical problems, shaping architecture, and mentoring engineers.

You will play a key role in:

Defining scalable architecture across our growing product portfolio
Leading the adoption of AI-assisted development practices
Strengthening engineering quality, security, and compliance standards
Driving consistency and technical excellence across teams

This role combines architecture, hands-on engineering, AI strategy, mentoring, and technical leadership.

You will have the opportunity to work across both greenfield development and established legacy products, helping modernise existing platforms while also shaping the future architecture and technical direction of new solutions. This role offers the chance to influence technology decisions across the full product lifecycle, from innovation and new product development through to optimisation and transformation of existing systems.

Job Description:

What Success Looks Like

In this role, you will help deliver:

• Clear and scalable technical architecture across all products
• Consistent engineering standards and secure development practices
• Successful adoption of AI-assisted engineering workflows
• Improved engineering quality, scalability, and delivery consistency
• Stronger technical capability and mentoring culture across teams
• A technical roadmap aligned to long-term business growth

Key Responsibilities

Technical Architecture

You will:

• Define and maintain the technical architecture across all products
• Lead architectural decision-making and technical direction
• Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with business needs
• Recommend technologies, frameworks, and platforms to support future growth
• Establish engineering standards, design patterns, and best practices
• Improve consistency and collaboration across products and engineering teams
• Manage the long-term technical roadmap, including technical debt prioritisation

Hands-On Technical Leadership

You will:

• Remain actively involved in coding and technical delivery
• Contribute directly to architecture, development, troubleshooting, and code reviews
• Lead by example through high-quality engineering practices
• Support teams with complex technical challenges and escalation points
• Act as a senior technical authority across engineering teams
• Balance engineering decisions across speed, scalability, security, and maintainability

AI Strategy & AI-Assisted Development

You will lead the adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices across the organisation.

This includes:

• Defining standards, best practices, and guardrails for AI-assisted development
• Supporting the use of AI tooling for:
  • Code generation
  • Automated code review
  • Intelligent testing
  • Documentation support
  • Development acceleration
• Establishing responsible AI governance aligned with ISO/IEC 42001 principles
• Ensuring AI-assisted development practices are implemented securely and consistently
• Promoting AI literacy and prompt engineering capability across engineering teams
• Evaluating emerging AI technologies and identifying productivity opportunities

Security, Compliance & Engineering Standards

You will:

• Lead secure-by-design engineering practices
• Support ISO 27001 and ISO/IEC 42001 initiatives
• Define and enforce coding standards, review processes, and quality expectations
• Improve engineering quality metrics and continuous improvement practices
• Support performance optimisation, resilience, scalability, and reliability
• Lead vulnerability remediation and security improvement activities

DevOps & Automation

You will:

• Architect and improve CI/CD pipelines
• Champion infrastructure-as-code and deployment automation
• Define standards for automated testing and release processes
• Support release governance and environment management
• Drive modern engineering automation practices

People & Team Development

You will:

• Mentor and coach developers across all experience levels
• Support technical growth and engineering excellence
• Encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration across teams
• Identify skills gaps and support development planning
• Support technical recruitment, onboarding, and assessments
• Help shape technical career progression pathways

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Experience with secure coding, vulnerability remediation, and performance optimisation
• Senior engineering, architecture, or technical leadership experience, leading technical direction across complex software products or platforms
• Hands-on software engineering capability with recent production coding experience
• Strong proficiency in enterprise languages (C#, Java, or similar) and cloud platforms, with hands‑on Azure experience.
• Demonstrable experience driving AI-assisted development in real engineering teams- hands‑on with AI‑powered development tools, prompt engineering, and LLM‑based workflows, plus an understanding of AI governance and responsible AI practices
• Strong grasp of software architecture, scalable system design, DevOps, CI/CD, and automation tooling
• Experience with secure coding, vulnerability remediation, and performance optimisation
• Ability to mentor and influence technical teams, with strong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders

Nice to Have

• Experience working across multiple products or platforms
• Experience within SaaS, transport, mobility, or regulated industries
• Familiarity with ISO 27001, ISO/IEC 42001, or similar frameworks
• Experience defining AI governance policies and engineering standards
• Track record of improving engineering productivity through AI tooling
• Experience working within agile and cross-functional engineering environments

Worker Type:

Regular

Number of Openings Available:

1