AI Engineering Lead

Job Description

As the AI Engineering Lead within our Digital team, you will lead the design, development, and scaling of AI-powered and automation capabilities across our customer and internal platforms. This is a hands-on technical leadership role focused on delivering intelligent, data-driven solutions that enhance customer experience and improve operational efficiency.

You will be responsible for leading AI engineering and automation initiatives while also remaining actively involved in the design and build of solutions. This includes shaping technical direction, developing key components, and working closely with the product engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable, and production-ready capabilities. The role also includes ownership of major AI initiatives and embedding best practice across teams.

What you'll be doing

• Lead the development and evolution of the ScottishPower Digital team's AI and automation capabilities, ensuring alignment with business priorities and customer outcomes
• Own delivery of strategic AI initiatives, defining the technical vision, roadmap, and operating model
• Actively design, build, and prototype AI-enabled solutions, contributing hands-on to key components and complex problem solving
• Establish and drive engineering standards for AI, including observability, evaluation, model governance, and responsible AI practices
• Review and contribute to solution designs, ensuring scalability, security, and maintainability across AI and automation platforms
• Embed automation-first thinking, identifying opportunities to optimise processes and improve efficiency through technology
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including Product, Data, Security, Engineering and Architecture to deliver integrated solutions
• Ensure alignment with AI governance, risk, and compliance frameworks, including model validation, monitoring, and auditability
• Lead and mentor engineers and specialists, fostering a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous improvement
• Drive adoption of AI and automation capabilities through practical delivery, tooling, and hands-on enablement

What you'll bring

• Proven experience leading delivery of AI, automation, or advanced digital solutions at scale
• Strong hands-on experience with AI/ML and modern engineering practices, ideally including LLMs, generative AI, agentic solutions and automation frameworks
• Demonstrated ability to design and build production-ready AI solutions
• Experience building and operating AI-enabled platforms or services in a cloud-native environment (e.g. Azure or AWS)
• Familiarity with RAG architectures, APIs, observability tools (Langfuse or similar), and data integration patterns
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps practices, and platform engineering for scalable delivery
• Knowledge of AI governance, security, and compliance considerations, including risk management and observability
• Proficiency with modern development tooling (e.g. Git, pipelines, infrastructure-as-code)
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate technical capability into business value
• Experience leading teams while remaining close to the technology and delivery

Minimum Criteria

• Proven experience leading the delivery of AI, automation, or advanced digital solutions at scale
• Hands-on expertise in AI/ML and modern engineering practices, including generative AI, LLMs, self-hosting language models or automation frameworks
• Demonstrated ability to design, build, and deploy production-ready AI solutions within cloud environments (e.g. Azure or AWS)
• Solid understanding of AI architectures and tooling (e.g. RAG, APIs, observability, data integration, CI/CD, and DevOps practices)
• Excellent leadership and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate technical solutions into clear business value while guiding teams

What's in it for you

As well as a competitive salary which is reviewed annually, you can also enjoy a number of other benefits. With our pension scheme, we'll double match your contribution up to a company contribution of 10%.

At ScottishPower, we believe it's the little things we do in life that make a big difference. From helping you look after your family's wellbeing, save for your future and take personal steps for climate action - our benefits are designed to help you do just that - so that you have everything you need to take care of your world - today and tomorrow. That's why our benefits include:

• 36 days annual leave
• Holiday purchase - perfect your work/life balance with extra annual leave
• Share Incentive Plan and Sharesave Scheme
• Payroll giving and charity matched funding
• Technology Vouchers - save more and spread the cost of your technology purposes
• Count us in - pledge to reduce carbon emissions and help fight climate change
• Electric Vehicle Schemes - to help you transition to green/clean driving
• Cycle to Work scheme and public transport season ticket loans
• Options to purchase dental insurance, private medical insurance, health cash plan and annual health assessments
• Life Assurance (4x salary)
• Access to 'nudge' financial wellbeing support
• Plus shopping, leisure, restaurant and gym discounts, and unique employee deals on travel insurance and more

Why ScottishPower

ScottishPower is part of the Iberdrola Group, one of the world's largest integrated utility companies and a world leader in wind energy. With a commitment to generate all of our energy from renewable resources and a drive to create the energy infrastructure of the future, we're at the forefront of the journey to Net Zero and investing over £6m every working day to make this happen. With diverse opportunities across our businesses and a commitment to invest in our own internal talent, ScottishPower can offer people real career opportunities that meet personal and professional goals, in a global organisation.

Inclusion, diversity, and a social purpose are at the heart of everything we do. Together with our values, they bring us together into a stronger, more sustainable business with direct links to the communities we serve. It takes all kinds of people to build a large-scale business like ours, so whatever your background, you'll fit right in.

ScottishPower is committed to providing reasonable support or adjustments in our recruiting processes for candidates with disabilities, long term conditions, mental health conditions, or who are neurodivergent or require pregnancy-related support. If you need support, please reach out to [email protected].

Mobility

Please note that any applicant who is not a citizen of the country of the vacancy will be subject to compliance with the applicable immigration requirements to legally work in that country. If/when required, the Company will support the employee with the necessary Immigration requirements.