Lead AI & Automation Engineer

Job Type: Permanent

Location: Hybrid: at any of our UK offices Birmingham, London, Telford, Edinburgh with time spent working in the office and at home

Flexible working: All roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process. You can read more about flexible working here.

Closing Date: 24th October

Salary and benefits: from £75,000 (dependant upon experience) plus an indicative bonus range of 16–32%, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more.

Who are we? 

We’re Standard Life, a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement savings and income. We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, and for more than 200 years, we’ve been helping our customers plan and prepare for their financial futures.

Life today is increasingly complicated, uncertain and unpredictable. People move through different careers, face unexpected moments and navigate important choices. We offer our colleagues flexibility, trust and benefits that work for whatever life brings. In return we expect curiosity, connection, accountability and high standards. We make room for what matters - so you can bring your best, every day.

The role

This is a senior, hands-on engineering role at the centre of our Pensions & Savings AI and automation ambition. You will lead the technical design and delivery of solutions from discovery and prototype through to secure, supported production services. Working within a multidisciplinary environment, you will set a strong example for engineering quality, create reusable patterns and platforms, resolve complex technical challenges and mentor engineers. You will help shape the reusable engineering approaches that other teams build on, developing them through your own hands-on delivery on live Pensions & Savings journeys.

What you will do

• Lead the end-to-end design and delivery of secure, scalable AI and automation solutions, from discovery and prototyping through to supported production services
• Work as a forward deployed engineer within Pensions & Savings Product and Journey teams, sitting alongside product and business colleagues to understand their problems first-hand and build solutions with them
• Build and integrate generative AI, agentic and automation solutions using appropriate cloud services, APIs, data sources, and pro-code or low-code technologies
• Create reusable components, reference implementations and automated delivery patterns, making clear engineering decisions across security, resilience, cost and maintainability
• Embed controls for security, data protection, testing, AI evaluation, observability, human oversight, release and operational support
• Partner with product, architecture, security, risk, operations, the AI Centre of Excellence and enterprise AI teams to deliver responsible, governed solutions
• Provide technical leadership through design and code reviews, complex problem-solving, mentoring and knowledge sharing

What are we looking for?

• Significant experience designing, building and operating secure, reliable AI, automation or software solutions in complex production environments
• Strong hands-on engineering capability across generative and agentic AI, cloud platforms, APIs, integration, data and modern software development practices
• Hands-on implementation experience with AWS (Bedrock, AgentCore) and Azure (Copilot Studio, Foundry), and with agentic frameworks such as LangGraph, Pydantic AI etc., covering workflow orchestration, tool integration and human oversight
• Hands-on experience instrumenting and evaluating agentic systems with tools such as Langfuse, LangSmith, DeepEval or Promptfoo, to trace agent behaviour, evaluate outputs and monitor production performance
• Experience applying MLOps, LLMOps and software lifecycle controls, including source control, CI/CD, testing, evaluation, guardrails, monitoring, resilience and cost optimisation
• The ability to lead technical decisions, communicate trade-offs clearly and turn ambiguous requirements into pragmatic, maintainable solutions
• A collaborative approach, with experience mentoring engineers and working across product, technology, data, architecture, security, risk and operations

How will we measure success?

• Well-designed AI and automation solutions delivered safely from experimentation into supported production services
• Consistent engineering quality, with effective testing, evaluation, security, observability and operational readiness
• Reusable patterns and components that improve delivery speed, maintainability and developer experience
• Measurable value, adoption, reliability and risk outcomes for the services delivered
• Stronger engineering capability through effective technical leadership, mentoring and knowledge sharing

We want to hire the whole version of you.

We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you.

If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.

We’re reviewing applications as they come in, so apply early to avoid missing out.

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Find out more about working at Standard Life

Guide for Candidates: standardlifeplc.pagetiger.com/guideforcandidates

Find or get answers from our colleagues: www.standardlifeplc.com/careers/talk-to-us