Engineering Lead - AI, Cloud & National Security
Package - £110,000 – £120,000 + dv bonus + excellent package
Location - Cheltenham - Hybrid
Clearance - eDV Clearance Required
Overview
Our exciting client is seeking an Engineering Lead to build and lead small, high-performing Agile teams (4–8 engineers) delivering secure, scalable solutions within the UK National Security (NatSec) domain.
This is a hands-on leadership role combining architecture, software engineering, and team leadership, with a focus on Software, AI, data platforms, and cloud-native systems.
Key Responsibilities
* Lead and mentor Agile engineering teams, driving high-quality, rapid delivery (DevSecOps)
* Own solution architecture, designing for secure and constrained environments.
* Lead the implementation of the \"underpinning tech\" for AI, including data pipelines.
* Act as a trusted advisor to UK Government stakeholders.
* Define technical roadmaps and support cloud transformation (AWS/Azure)
Core Skills
* Background in UK National Security / Defence / Government.
* Strong leadership experience in software engineering teams.
* Proficiency in Python, Go, or Java (+ TypeScript/Node.js desirable)
* Expertise in AWS or Azure, Terraform, and Kubernetes (EKS/AKS)
* Strong grounding in SQL (Postgres) and NoSQL (MongoDB/DynamoDB)
* Experience with CI/CD, microservices, TDD/BDD.
* Knowledge of secure system design.
Desirable (AI & Data)
* Vector DBs: Milvus, Weaviate, Pinecone
* Data orchestration: Airflow, Prefect, Dagster
* Search: ElasticSearch / OpenSearch
* AI frameworks: LangChain, Hugging Face
* MLOps: MLflow, Kubeflow
If you are looking for an opportunity to work on mission-critical systems at the forefront of UK National Security? Apply now or get in touch for a confidential conversation.