Lead AI‑Enabled DevOps Engineer
Technical leadership at the intersection of software, platforms, and AI
We're seeking a Lead AI‑Enabled DevOps Engineer to join a growing engineering capability and play a central role in shaping how AI is embedded into real, production‑grade software systems.
This is not a traditional people‑management role. Instead, you'll lead through technical depth, architectural judgement, and delivery experience by setting direction, guiding teams, and making informed decisions as AI capabilities are integrated into modern software platforms.
If you enjoy working where architecture, APIs, DevOps, and AI meet, and you care about building systems that are secure, operable, and genuinely useful, this role offers the chance to have real impact.
What you'll be doing
Your focus will be on enabling AI within modern, API‑first software platforms, particularly where legacy or existing systems need to evolve to support new capabilities safely and effectively.
You will:
1. Provide technical leadership across AI‑enabled software and DevOps engineering teams
2. Set architectural direction for API‑first design, system integration, and platform enablement for AI
3. Lead the modernisation of legacy or existing applications toward service‑based, API‑driven architectures
4. Define and guide integration patterns between applications, platforms, and AI services
5. Make pragmatic decisions about when and how emerging AI integration approaches (. protocols such as MCP) should be adopted
6. Work closely with architects, product teams, data scientists, and platform engineers to deliver end‑to‑end solutions
7. Ensure solutions meet standards for security, resilience, performance, and operability
8. Anticipate and manage architectural and operational risks associated with AI‑enabled systems
9. Champion strong engineering practices across software development, DevOps, and platform engineering
10. Lead by example in complex environments where production reliability matters
This is delivery‑focused leadership, not experimentation for its own sake.
What we're looking for
We're looking for someone who combines senior technical credibility with the confidence to guide others and shape direction.
Essential experience:
11. Strong background as a Senior or Lead Software Engineer, Lead DevOps Engineer, or similar hands‑on leadership role
12. Excellent software engineering fundamentals: system design, clean code, testing, and long‑term maintainability
13. Deep experience designing and delivering API‑driven and microservice‑based systems
14. Proven ability to modernise or integrate legacy systems into modern platforms
15. Solid development experience in TypeScript and Python
16. Experience spanning software delivery, CI/CD, infrastructure, and operations
17. Comfortable setting direction and influencing teams without relying on formal authority
18. Able to balance innovation with pragmatism in production environments
Desirable experience:
19. Integrating software systems with AI platforms or AI‑enabled services
20. Exposure to emerging AI integration patterns or protocols (. Model Context Protocol)
21. Platform engineering or DevOps at scale
22. Experience working in regulated or security‑conscious environments
23. Defining technical standards or architectural direction across multiple teams
Guidant, Carbon60, Lorien & SRG - The Impellam Group Portfolio are acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.