Senior Lead Engineer - Advanced Engineering (AI)

Location: Hybrid role based at one of the office sites in Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, or Leeds, with at least two days per week or 40% of working time in the office.

Salary: £84,624–£105,780 per year

Company

hirify.global is a major UK banking organisation developing data, AI, and technology capabilities to improve customer and colleague experiences.

What you will do

• Identify priority business problems and adoption bottlenecks for customer-facing AI solutions in regulated environments.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies through applied research, experimentation, and rapid prototyping.
• Lead the engineering and delivery of operational MVPs that can be adopted at scale.
• Advise engineering teams, technology leaders, and business stakeholders on Generative AI and Agentic AI.
• Coach and mentor engineers while influencing AI engineering standards, strategy, and reusable practices.

Requirements

• Experience leading engineering teams and delivering production-grade technology in complex environments.
• Strong software engineering expertise, including proficiency in at least two programming languages.
• Deep applied AI/ML and Generative AI experience, including RAG, tool use, guardrails, evaluation frameworks, and AI agents.
• Experience designing, building, and operating AI solutions in regulated environments with attention to reliability, security, safety, and explainability.
• Strong analytical, technical leadership, stakeholder management, coaching, and mentoring skills.

Nice to have

• Experience in regulated industries, particularly financial services.
• Experience conducting or applying research in industry, academia, or equivalent settings.
• Experience developing large-scale customer-facing technology and influencing standards or reusable architectures across large organisations.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid working with flexibility in office attendance and working patterns where reasonable adjustments apply.
• Up to 15% pension contribution and an annual performance-related bonus.
• Share schemes, including free shares.
• 30 days of holiday plus bank holidays, generous parental leave, and wellbeing initiatives.
• Commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and workplace adjustments.