AI Technical Lead - Solutions and Engineering

Job Title: AI Technical Lead (Solutions & Engineering) Division: Data, Technology and Innovation (DTI) Department: AI Product Delivery Salary: London from £59,200 to £88,600 per annum and National (Edinburgh and Leeds) ranging from £53,800 to £80,600 (salary offered will be based on skills and experience)This role is graded as: Senior Associate - RegulatoryYour external recruitment contact is Benjamin via benjamin.paulon@fca.org.uk Your internal recruitment contact is Pat via Patrycja.Matachowska@fca.org.ukApplications 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, you’ll 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. The AI Product Delivery Department (AIPD) exists to transform FCA business processes through AI, safely and at scale. It provides the product-led capability to meet growing organisational demand, moving work from promising AI experiments into live, adopted services. Its operating model combines portfolio and value management, platforms and engineering, and three cross-functional delivery pods focused on Authorisations, Supervision and Enforcement priorities. The Products and Delivery Team owns pace, execution and adoption: turning validated business problems into secure products, embedding AI into real workflows, using evaluation, provenance and go-live discipline You will provide hands-on technical leadership for one pod. You will translate product outcomes into a coherent, secure and operable solution, leads internal and supplier engineers, and ensures the product can move from MVP to production without avoidable architectural rework. Role Responsibilities Lead the pod’s technical execution, translating product outcomes into implementable solutions, guiding engineering decisions, maintaining clear technical decision records and aligning delivery pragmatically with shared FCA platform standards, enterprise constraints and long-term sustainabilityShape the technical foundations of a newly established AI Product Delivery function and, together with the Platforms and Engineering team, defining engineering standards, reusable patterns and delivery approaches that will influence multiple AI products across the organisationTranslate product and operational requirements into scalable end-to-end solutions spanning user journeys, APIs, events, data flows, AI services and enterprise integrations, ensuring technology delivers measurable business valueConduct technical design reviews, supplier engagement, code reviews, assurance activities and engineering oversight while mentoring teams and remaining hands-on enough to validate critical assumptions ensuring internal and supplier engineers operate to industry best practice and FCA strategic standards, while promoting effective knowledge transfer, mentoring and sustainable code ownershipDrive intelligent technology decisions by selecting the most appropriate approach across deterministic software, workflow automation, retrieval systems, foundation models and agentic solutionsDesign how deterministic services, workflow orchestration, specialised agents, tools, memory and human approval operate as one governed system, applying the minimum level of agency necessary for the use caseDesign for evidence and provenance where the risk tier requires it: traceable inputs, source evidence, tool calls, outputs, approvals, versions, corrections and replayOwn the integration, drawing on shared data, security and knowledge-architecture specialists rather than duplicating enterprise functionsDefine technical readiness – resilience, performance, observability, support and incident handling – and provide the technical readiness view for go-live.Present progress and summaries to non-technical staff up to senior leadership team and beyond as required Minimum Skills required A solid practical background as a staff, principal or lead engineer delivering complex production systemsExperience designing cloud-native architectures across APIs, distributed systems, events or workflow platformsExperience leading internal or supplier engineers through design review, code review and coaching Essential Taking AI-enabled and data-intensive products from proof of concept to fully operational and supported servicesDeveloping robust, production-ready code with security by design, observability, testing and CI/CDIntegrating enterprise systems while balancing rapid MVP delivery with sustainable architectureMaking clear, well-documented technical decisions and constructively challenging assumptions and approachesDesigning systems that maintain human oversight, auditability and accountability for decisionsDriving knowledge management and ensuring effective transfer of technical expertise into permanent organisational ownershipParticularly valuable: experience with AWS Bedrock and AgentCore; RAG, agentic workflows, LLM judges and evaluation-driven development and human-in-the-loop systems. Designing controlled learning and adaptation loops in which operational outcomes can generate lessons, skills or changes to prompts, tools and workflows, with evaluation, versioning, approval and rollback before production deployment. Entity resolution, temporal modelling, provenance, event driven architectures, graph or knowledge architectures – including decision-record patterns. Regulated, public-sector or high-accountability delivery. Benefits 25 days annual leave plus bank holidaysColleagues 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 officesNon-contributory pension (8–12% depending on age) and life assurance at eight times your salaryPrivate healthcare with Bupa, income protection, and 24/7 Employee Assistance35 hours of paid volunteering annuallyA 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 that’s 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 We’re 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 process. In cases of high application volumes, we may progress applicants whose experience most closely matches the role’s key requirements. Useful information and timeline Advert Closing: 11 October at 11:59pmCV Review/Shortlist: 13 OctoberTechnical Assessment: 14 - 21 OctoberCase Study: 29 October- 3 NovemberInterview W/C: 9 NovemberThe selection process will involve a technical assessment, a case study presentation and a formal competency-based interviewYour 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.