Gen AI Chapter Lead

The Gen AI Chapter Lead is responsible for establishing and scaling Admiral’s Gen AI capability, setting a clear vision and high standards to ensure the business is equipped for future success in Gen AI operations. This role will lead the formation of a high-performing team, with a strong focus on attracting, recruiting, and developing top talent in the Gen AI space. The Chapter Lead takes responsibility for the line management of engineers. They will define and embed best practices, foster an inclusive environment for innovation and learning, and ensure alignment with Admiral’s strategic goals. They will also be accountable for building the people, processes, and technology needed to deliver sustainable value, while championing responsible AI, robust governance, and continuous upskilling to position Admiral at the forefront of Gen AI adoption.

The main responsibilities of a Chapter Lead are to drive strategic initiatives to improve the practice of AI engineering, with a focus on the ‘5 Ms’: Method, Model, Machinery, Metrics and Mindset. A Chapter Lead must build up the right capabilities of the AI engineers in the tribe, equipping them with the skills, tools, and standard approaches to deliver functional excellence, and ensuring that they are delivering value to the business.

This role will play a critical part in building and scaling our AI squads and strategy across the Data Tribe, helping define capability splits, technical standards, and onboarding pathways. The Chapter Lead will collaborate with internal and external experts to shape and accelerate this initiative.

Main Duties

• Define and deliver the people, process, and technology strategy for the AI Engineering capability, ensuring alignment with Admiral IT governance and architectural standards in a regulated environment.
• Lead recruitment, onboarding, development, and retention of AI Engineers, including career pathways, compensation, benefits, and promotion processes.
• Provide inclusive leadership and effective line management, fostering a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous learning.
• Coach and mentor Chapter members using agile principles and Admiral values, supporting both personal and technical skills development to enhance Squad performance.
• Apply performance management mechanisms in collaboration with Squad Leads and Product Owners to drive operational excellence and identify corrective actions when needed.
• Support strategic initiatives and projects to improve engineering practices, tooling, and squad outcomes.
• Promote core engineering principles (e.g. accountability, transparency, quality, reusability, automation) and ensure knowledge sharing across Squads and the wider organisation.
• Serve as a senior coach and advisor to Agile Squads, enabling autonomy while remaining close enough to provide guidance and support.
• Define and track capability metrics related to people development, squad composition, onboarding, and performance.
• Collaborate with Tribe leadership and Chapter Leads to scale AI squads, plan capability growth, and understand development needs across the Data Tribe.

Experience Required

Essential

• Strong leadership behaviours.
• Knowledge and experience of line management and/or extensive experience of both coaching and mentoring techniques.
• Knowledge and experience in Scrum development practices, using associated tools for testing and continuous integration & deployment.
• AI and ML Engineering foundations.
• Experience with Gen AI tooling and technologies.
• Knowledge of cloud specific data architectures and functions (ideally GCP).
• Knowledge and experience in the use of automation, dev ops or ML ops technologies, including security, monitoring and alerting.
• Knowledge of identification and management of specific engineering, design and testing standards and practices that comply with internal organisation IT governance and architectural standards while performing within a heavily regulated environment.
• Experience in scaling engineering teams or squads, including capability planning and onboarding.

Desirable

• Domain expert - Extensive knowledge and experience with Gen AI tooling and technologies, including LLM development and integration, MCP Servers, lang chain, RAG, prompt engineering and fine tuning.
• GCP Vertex AI (or equivalent), ML model marketplaces (e.g. Model Garden), Pipelines, Notebooks, Model Registry & Endpoints and familiarity with ML learning techniques and deep learning.
• Azure Dev Ops, feature engineering, feature stores, Docker containers and orchestration, IAC (Terraform).
• Accomplished Python programming.
• Version control in a collaborative environment e.g. Git.
• Knowledge and experience with design, development and testing of data pipelines and Kimball data warehouse models.
• Knowledge and experience in the use of data development tools and cloud technologies such as: Big Query, DataFlow, Airflow, DBT, Looker or similar technologies and tools.
• ANSI SQL.
• Data Governance & Management: Data quality, lineage, and compliance.
• Fin Ops strategies for cost-effective infrastructure.

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We’re proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits here.

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