AI Engineering Manager

AI Engineering ManagerLocation: UK – Hybrid / FlexibleSalary: Up to £120,000 base salary, dependent on experience + BonusThe OpportunityWe are seeking an experienced AI Engineering Manager to lead the design, development and delivery of innovative AI solutions for complex, large-scale environments. This is a hands-on technical leadership role combining AI engineering, solution architecture, project delivery and people management.You will lead multidisciplinary teams to take AI and machine learning solutions from concept through to production, ensuring they are scalable, secure, reliable and deliver measurable value. Your initial work will focus on healthcare, with further opportunities across public sector and other highly regulated environments.The successful candidate will be comfortable operating as the senior technical lead on projects, working closely with clients and senior stakeholders while guiding teams across software engineering, data engineering and cloud/platform engineering.Key ResponsibilitiesLead multidisciplinary teams delivering production-grade AI and machine learning solutions.Own technical direction, architecture and engineering standards across AI projects.Design and deliver solutions involving generative AI, large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering and agentic AI.Establish robust approaches to model evaluation, monitoring, performance measurement and continuous improvement.Drive high-quality engineering practices, including Python development, automated testing, code reviews and CI/CD.Design and deliver scalable cloud-based AI solutions using platforms such as Microsoft Azure or AWS, alongside technologies including Docker and Kubernetes.Work with large-scale, unstructured and multimodal datasets to develop effective AI-enabled solutions.Ensure responsible AI principles are embedded throughout delivery, considering security, privacy, ethics, interpretability and governance.Build trusted relationships with clients and senior stakeholders, translating complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes.Coach, mentor and develop engineers, supporting technical excellence and continuous learning.Contribute to project planning, delivery governance and the development of new AI capabilities and propositions.Essential ExperienceProven experience leading multidisciplinary teams delivering AI or machine learning solutions into production.Strong technical leadership and architecture experience across AI engineering and software delivery.Practical knowledge of generative AI, LLMs, RAG, prompt engineering, agentic AI and model evaluation.Strong Python development skills and a sound understanding of software engineering best practice.Experience delivering AI solutions at scale on Azure or AWS, ideally using containerisation and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.Experience working with complex datasets, including unstructured or multimodal data.An understanding of responsible AI, security, privacy and the governance considerations involved in deploying AI solutions.Demonstrable experience managing, mentoring and developing technical teams.Strong client-facing communication skills, with the ability to engage senior stakeholders and lead technical discussions.Desirable ExperienceExperience with PyTorch, TensorFlow or other machine learning frameworks.Knowledge of LLM fine-tuning, model distillation and optimisation techniques.Experience with vector databases, semantic search, knowledge graphs or related technologies.Familiarity with AI governance frameworks, security standards or ISO 42001.Contributions to open-source projects, research or the wider AI engineering community.Experience supporting presales, shaping AI propositions or identifying opportunities to commercialise AI capabilities.The Ideal CandidateYou will be an accomplished AI engineering leader who combines strong technical depth with the ability to lead people, manage complex delivery and build trusted client relationships. You will enjoy working in a collaborative consulting environment, tackling challenging problems and delivering AI solutions that move beyond experimentation into real-world use.Security clearance: Candidates must already hold, or be eligible to obtain, UK Security Check (SC) clearance.