AI Architect Principal AI Engineer

Role: Principal AI Engineer - Lead Colleague AI Transformation (Financial Services)

Location: Central London Full Time Hybrid working 2/3 times per week from the office the rest from home

Start Date: ASAP

End Date: 6 Months initially

Daily Rate: Very competitive day rate Inside IR35

We are seeking a hands-on Principal AI Engineer to act as the technical right hand for the Automation & AI Practice accelerating the Colleague AI agenda. This pivotal role will transition the organisation from isolated AI experiments to a fully resourced governed and scalable AI delivery capability. You will seed in-house expertise to reduce vendor dependency mitigate key person risk and govern shadow AI usage across the business.

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across Colleague AI initiatives including Sierra PoC and Claude roll-out owning architecture and design.
  
• Drive the build of agentic AI solutions for Tribeless colleagues.
  
• Consult on the broader Colleague AI backlog (complaint triage helpdesk assistant inbox routing QA/QC) ensuring solutions are fit for purpose secure low risk and cost-efficient amid consumption-based AI pricing.
  
• Define and embed AI engineering standards reference architectures and reusable patterns collaborating with infrastructure teams to govern shadow AI usage.
  
• Lead AI literacy and enablement across Digital and the wider business.
  
• Mentor and uplift the Automation Practice team to diffuse AI capability and support transition to a permanent in-house AI Engineering Manager.
  
• Represent the Automation & AI Practice in cross-functional forums translating AI strategy into delivery roadmaps and measurable outcomes.
  

• Deep hands-on technical leadership experience at Principal/Lead level.
  
• Strong expertise in Generative AI LLMs agentic architectures and multi-agent systems with proven production delivery in regulated environments (FS preferred).
  
• Proven experience building agentic solutions using Microsoft Copilot Studio/Foundry AWS Bedrock/AgentCore and frameworks such as LangChain LangGraph CrewAI Strands.
  
• Comfortable across Microsoft and AWS cloud ecosystems including LLM gateway/Bedrock patterns data residency SSO/OIDC federation and cost controls.
  
• Experience with Claude/Anthropic OpenAI Microsoft Copilot families including MCP connectors skills and trade-offs.
  
• Strong understanding of AI testing disciplines (accuracy hallucination bias prompt evaluations) and AI governance/risk (DPIA data classification FCA considerations).
  
• Excellent stakeholder management skills able to engage from board-level to engineer-level.
  
• Mentorship and capability-building mindset to strengthen the team and avoid key-person dependency.
  

• Sierra PoC enhancing client NPS helpdesk demand deflection and colleague efficiencies.
  
• Claude Roll-out boosting colleague productivity.
  
• AI Enablement improving AI literacy and adoption across the business.
  
• AI Citizen Development Framework accelerating solution time to market and reducing digital dependency.
  
• Copilot Continuous Improvement driving ongoing colleague productivity gains.
  

If you are a visionary AI leader ready to shape the AI future and build sustainable scalable AI capabilities we want to hear from you.