AI Engineering Lead

Job description

Join us as an AI Engineering Lead for Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management, where you will play a key role in shaping and scaling the adoption of AI across the organisation. You will lead a team of engineers delivering AI-enabled products and platforms that enhance colleague productivity, improve client experiences, and unlock new business opportunities.

Working across business, architecture, risk, security, and engineering teams, you will define technical approaches, establish engineering standards, and ensure the successful delivery of strategic AI initiatives. This is a unique opportunity to influence the direction of AI adoption within a highly regulated environment while building a high-performing engineering capability.

The role will include:

• Leading, mentoring, and developing a team of AI and software engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Defining the technical strategy and engineering standards for AI-enabled applications and platforms across Private Bank and Wealth Management.
• Delivering scalable, secure, and resilient cloud-native solutions on AWS.
• Establishing reusable patterns, frameworks, and best practices to accelerate the adoption of Agentic AI solutions across the organisation.
• Driving engineering quality through effective testing, observability, operational support, and platform governance practices.

To be successful as an AI Engineering Lead, you should have:

• Proven experience working across architecture, security, governance, risk, and business stakeholders within complex enterprise environments.
• Experience designing and delivering modern software solutions using APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures.
• Experience building AI-enabled, data-driven, or intelligent applications and successfully bringing them into production.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence technical and non-technical audiences.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Experience building Generative AI or Agentic AI solutions.
• Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic search, and vector database technologies.
• Familiarity with AWS AI services, including Amazon Bedrock.
• Experience establishing engineering standards, reusable frameworks, and platform capabilities.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in the role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking, and digital and technology capabilities, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role will be based in Glasgow.

Purpose of the role

To lead and manage engineering teams, providing technical guidance, mentorship, and support to ensure the delivery of high-quality software solutions, driving technical excellence, fostering a culture of innovation, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to align technical decisions with business objectives.

Accountabilities

• Lead engineering teams effectively, fostering a collaborative and high-performance culture to achieve project goals and meet organizational objectives.
• Oversee timelines, team allocation, risk management and task prioritization to ensure the successful delivery of solutions within scope, time, and budget.
• Mentor and support team members' professional growth, conduct performance reviews, provide actionable feedback, and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Evaluation and enhancement of engineering processes, tools, and methodologies to increase efficiency, streamline workflows, and optimize team productivity.
• Collaboration with business partners, product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions and ensure a cohesive approach to product development.
• Enforcement of technology standards, facilitate peer reviews, and implement robust testing practices to ensure the delivery of high-quality solutions.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department's future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L - Listen and be authentic, E - Energise and inspire, A - Align across the enterprise, D - Develop others..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship - our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset - to Empower, Challenge and Drive - the operating manual for how we behave.