Lead AI Engineer - GCP / Machine Learning / AI Agents

Lead AI Engineer - GCP / Machine Learning / AI Agents
£85k - £90k + Up to 15% Bonus + Benefits - Permanent
Remote UK - Flexible remote working model - Occasional travel to the South-East / South London region
Must be Eligible to work in the UK - Cannot Provide Sponsorship

We're currently supporting a large consumer-focused organisation undergoing significant investment across AI, Machine Learning & Cloud Engineering capability. As part of this growth, we're looking to identify an experienced Lead AI Engineer to help shape, build and deliver scalable AI-enabled solutions across the organisation.
This role would suit someone with a strong Software Engineering background who has evolved into AI / Machine Learning Engineering and is comfortable operating across both hands-on technical delivery & technical leadership. Alongside remaining hands-on, you'll help mentor AI Engineers, establish engineering best practice and support the delivery of enterprise-scale AI solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop AI-enabled Applications & Services
• Build scalable AI & Machine Learning solutions within a GCP environment
• Lead the technical direction of AI Engineering initiatives
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring and coaching to AI Engineers across the wider team
• Help establish engineering standards, best practice and code quality across AI Engineering
• Collaborate closely with Digital Products, AI, Data & business stakeholders
• Support the development of AI Agents and intelligent automation capabilities
• Drive Engineering best practice across cloud-native AI delivery
• Help transition AI Proof of Concepts into secure, scalable production solutions
• Contribute towards architecture, experimentation and proof-of-concept initiatives

Required Experience

• Strong Software Engineering background (Python preferred)
• Commercial AI / Machine Learning Engineering experience
• Hands-on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) experience
• Experience deploying ML / AI solutions into production environments
• Understanding of modern AI frameworks & LLM ecosystems
• Exposure to AI Agents, Agentic AI workflows and/or Google ADK highly desirable
• Strong stakeholder engagement & communication capability
• Previous technical leadership, mentoring or experience leading Engineering teams would be highly beneficial

Desirable Technologies

• GCP / Vertex AI
• Gemini
• Python
• AI Agents / ADK
• Machine Learning Frameworks
• APIs & Microservices
• Docker / Kubernetes
• CI/CD Pipelines
• LLM Orchestration Frameworks

Additional Information

• Bonus potential up to c.15%
• Opportunity to join a growing AI capability within a large-scale Enterprise environment
• Opportunity to combine hands-on AI Engineering with technical leadership and mentoring
• Excellent long-term progression potential as the AI function expands