Lead AI Engineer

Job Title:Lead AI Engineer

Division: Data Technology and Innovation

Department: AI Product Delivery

• Salary:National (Edinburgh and Leeds) ranging from 72100 to 108000 and London from 79300 to 120000 per annum (salary offered will be based on skills and experience)

• This role is graded as:Technical Specialist Regulatory

• Your external recruitment contact isBenjamin via

• Your internal recruitment contactis Lauren via

• Applications must be submitted through our online portal. Applications sent via social media or email will not be accepted.

About the FCA and team

We regulate financial services firms in the UK to keep financial markets fair thriving and effective. By joining us youll play a key part in protecting consumers driving economic growth and shaping the future of UK finance services.

The Data Technology and Innovation (DTI) division enables the FCA to be a digital-first data-led smart regulator by delivering a secure agile and cost-effective technology and data ecosystem that drives better decisions transparency and operational efficiency.

Working alongside the wider AI Programme (which will continue to oversee/coordinate AI activity across the FCA) the department will partner with business leads to shape and deliver work in priority areas Authorisations SPC EMO and AntiMoney Laundering.

Role responsibilities

• Standardise and advance reusable AI solution patterns and reference architectures improving cross-team consistency and delivery quality to enable more reliable and scalable product development

• Establish end-to-end technical architectures for LLM-enabled systems covering data pipelines retrieval/RAG prompt orchestration and agent workflows to support robust and effective AI implementation

• Analyse complex constraints across product data security legal and operations translating them into clear standards and recommendations to enable delivery of highly complex AI solutions

• Enhance CI/CD pipelines for AI systems introducing automation traceability and controlled release processes to ensure safe and repeatable deployments.

• Define monitoring observability and operational strategies improving visibility across quality performance safety cost and reliability to support effective issue diagnosis and resolution

• Set standards for prompt engineering evaluation and testing enhancing solution quality and behavioural consistency to support teams in resolving complex model challenges

• Advance digital and data-driven methods by shaping organisational practices and innovation efforts that produce measurable improvements in performance and efficiency

• Collaborate with senior stakeholders to deliver analytics-led solutions addressing regulatory challenges and generating organisational impact to contribute to improved decision-making and long-term economic outcomes

Skills required

Minimum:

• Extensive backend engineering experience building production services such as APIs and microservices with solid software engineering fundamentals combined with experience developing technical architecture and designs and taking them through enterprise review processes

• Experience delivering cloud solutions on AWS including deploying operating and troubleshooting services in live environments

• Working knowledge of modern DevOps practices such as CI/CD containerisation and monitoring with experience collaborating with engineers to deliver iteratively

Essential:

• Solid backend engineering experience with experience designing building and running reliable services in production (performance resilience and security)

• Direct experience building and operating solutions on AWS including AWS AI services and the supporting platform services required for production delivery

• AI engineering experience delivering LLM-enabled systems using LLM APIs/Bedrock including RAG architectures vector databases and orchestration frameworks

• DevOps skills including CI/CD pipelines containerisation and monitoring/observability with experience defining release and operating practices for AI services

• Experience Leading Engineering teams: providing technical guidance aligning on standards/patterns and adapting plans to resolve delivery and operational challenges

• Demonstrable capability in prompt design and in setting evaluation/testing approaches for LLM solutions (quality safety/guardrails and performance) including defining measurable success criteria

Benefits

• 28days annual leave plus bank holidays

• Colleagues spend a minimum of 50% of their working time in the office each month (60% for Directors and Executive Directors) across our London Leeds and Edinburgh offices.

• Non-contributory pension (812% depending on age) and life assurance at eight times your salary

• Private healthcare with Bupa income protection and 24/7 Employee Assistance

• 35 hours of paid volunteering annually

• A flexible benefits scheme designed around your lifestyle

For a full list of our benefits and our recruitment process as a whole visit our benefits page.

Our values & culture

Our colleagues are the key to our success as a regulator. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture: one thats free from discrimination and bias celebrates difference and supports colleagues to deliver at their best. We believe that our differences and similarities enable us to be a better organisation one that makes better decisions drives innovation and delivers better regulation.

If you require any adjustments due to a disability or condition your recruiter is here to help - reach out for tailored support.

We welcome diverse working styles and aim to find flexible solutions that suit both the role and individual needs including options like part-time and job sharing where applicable.

Disability Confident: our hiring approach

Were proud to be a Disability Confident Employer and therefore people or individuals with disabilities and long-term conditions who best meet the minimum criteria for a role will go through to the next stage of the recruitment cases of high application volumes we may progress applicants whose experience most closely matches the roles key requirements.

Useful information and timeline

• Advert Closing:30/08/26

• CV Review/Shortlist:01/09/26

• Interviews W/C: 14/09/26

• Your Recruiter will discuss the process in detail with you during screening for the role therefore please make them aware if you are going to be unavailable for any date during this time.