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 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIEngineering #LeadAIEngineer #MachineLearning #ML #GenAI #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #AIAgents #LLM #LLMEngineering #VertexAI #GCP #GoogleCloud #Python #CloudEngineering #MachineLearningEngineer #TechJobs #Hiring #RemoteJobs #UKTech #DataEngineering #SoftwareEngineering #DigitalTransformation