AI & Automation Engineering Lead — Production Systems

Sanlam Limited; Johannesburg; Vor Ort; ZAR 1.200.000 - 2.100.000; Vollzeit

Zusammenfassung

Sanlam Corporate is seeking a Tech Lead Engineering – AI and Automation to steer the design, build and operation of AI-enabled, secure production systems. You will lead engineers, set standards, and partner with business and risk teams to prioritise AI initiatives while ensuring governance, POPIA compliance and scalable delivery.

The role focuses on leading with hands-on engineering, driving MLOps/LLMOps, and delivering measurable business benefits through automation and intelligent document

Qualifikationen

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or a related field is advantageous.
• 8+ years’ software engineering experience, including at least 3 years in a technical lead role.
• Proven experience delivering AI/ML or generative AI solutions into production.
• Experience delivering process automation (RPA, workflow or low-code platforms).
• Cloud certification is advantageous.
• Financial services or insurance industry experience is advantageous.
• Strong software engineering skills in Python and at least one of C#, Java or TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs and generative AI: prompt engineering, RAG, vector databases, agent orchestration and evaluation frameworks.
• Experience with automation and orchestration platforms (UiPath, Power Automate or similar).
• Cloud-native development and AI services on a major cloud platform, including containers, DevOps and CI/CD.
• Data engineering fundamentals: data pipelines, data quality, and working with structured and unstructured data.
• Security and governance for AI, including POPIA.
• Leadership experience in managing cross-functional engineering teams and influencing senior management and key stakeholders
• Good communicator who can explain AI concepts to non-technical audiences.

Aufgaben

• Leads, coaches and grows a team of AI, automation and software engineers, including recruitment, performance management and skills development.
• Defines and maintains engineering standards, reference architectures and reusable components for AI and automation solutions.
• Designs and builds solutions using large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI agents and integrations with enterprise systems and APIs.
• Drives intelligent automation of business processes, including workflow automation, RPA and intelligent document processing across administration, claims, underwriting and client servicing.
• Takes solutions from proof of concept to production, ensuring they are secure, scalable, observable and supportable.
• Establishes MLOps/LLMOps practices, including CI/CD, model and prompt versioning, automated evaluation, monitoring and cost tracking.
• Embeds responsible AI controls such as human-in-the-loop design, guardrails, accuracy and bias testing, explainability and audit trails, in line with Group AI governance, POPIA and regulatory requirements.
• Partners with business units and product owners to identify, size and prioritise AI and automation use cases based on value, feasibility and risk.
• Works with enterprise architecture, data, security and infrastructure teams to ensure solutions integrate cleanly with core systems and cloud platforms.
• Collaborates with Group AI and other Sanlam clusters to reuse shared platforms and patterns and avoid duplication.
• Evaluates AI and automation tools and platforms, and manages relationships with technology vendors and partners.
• Tracks and reports on delivery progress, adoption and benefits realised (for example hours saved, turnaround times and cost).
• Brings in outward trends in AI and automation to influence business and technology strategy.
• Builds AI literacy and engineering capability across IT through communities of practice, demos and mentoring.

Kenntnisse

AI/ML production

Generative AI

Team leadership

Python

Cloud platforms

CI/CD

Data governance

Ausbildung

Degree in Computer Science / Engineering / Information Systems

Tools

UiPath

Power Automate

APIs

LLMOps tools

Jobbeschreibung

Sanlam Corporate is seeking a Tech Lead Engineering – AI and Automation to steer the design, build and operation of AI-enabled, secure production systems. You will lead engineers, set standards, and partner with business and risk teams to prioritise AI initiatives while ensuring governance, POPIA compliance and scalable delivery.

The role focuses on leading with hands-on engineering, driving MLOps/LLMOps, and delivering measurable business benefits through automation and intelligent document