AI Architect

Senior AI Architect – Financial Services

📍 London, UK (Hybrid Working Model)
⏳ Initial 6-Month Engagement
💰 £650-£700 per day (Inside IR35)

The Opportunity

Our client, a leading organisation within the financial services sector, is undertaking a strategic transformation to embed Artificial Intelligence at enterprise scale.

They are seeking a Senior AI Architect to play a pivotal role in shaping, delivering, and—critically—driving the adoption of production-grade AI solutions across the business.

This mandate goes beyond innovation and experimentation. The organisation requires a leader who can translate AI ambition into live, trusted, and widely adopted capabilities, ensuring measurable business impact.

A key priority is addressing a common industry challenge:

transitioning AI initiatives from proof-of-concept into fully operational, value-generating products.

Key Responsibilities

AI Strategy & Architecture

• Define and lead the end-to-end AI architecture, encompassing:
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • Large Language Model (LLM) integration and orchestration
  • Agent-based workflows and services
• Establish scalable, secure, and reusable AI design patterns aligned to enterprise standards

Product-Focused Delivery

• Lead the delivery of production-ready AI solutions, ensuring initiatives:
  • Progress beyond PoC and governance bottlenecks
  • Are deployed into live environments
  • Achieve sustained user adoption
• Embed a product-centric mindset, with clear ownership of outcomes and value realisation

AI Platform Engineering

• Oversee the design and implementation of advanced AI capabilities, including:
  • RAG pipelines integrating enterprise data sources (e.g., Teams, SharePoint)
  • Agent-driven applications interfacing with internal and legacy systems
  • Text-to-SQL solutions enabling natural language interaction with business data
• Enable robust deployment through CI/CD-integrated pipelines, including automated workflows within platforms such as Databricks

Technology Leadership (Microsoft Ecosystem)

• Operate within a Microsoft-centric technology landscape, including:
  • Azure OpenAI
  • Azure AI Search
  • Azure Databricks
  • Azure AI Foundry
  • Microsoft Fabric
• Define integration standards across AI, data, and enterprise platforms

Adoption, Influence & Investment

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior leadership and C-suite stakeholders
• Clearly articulate AI value across:
  • Commercial impact
  • Operational efficiency
  • Risk mitigation
• Drive enterprise adoption and influence stakeholders to:
  • Build confidence in AI solutions
  • Unlock and allocate budgets for AI initiatives
• Navigate complex stakeholder environments, including resistance to AI investment

Governance & Risk

• Ensure all AI solutions adhere to financial services regulatory frameworks, including:
  • Data privacy and security
  • Model governance and auditability
  • Bias mitigation and explainability
• Design AI systems suitable for sensitive use cases, such as credit risk, regulatory reporting, and financial data services

Candidate Profile

Sector Expertise

• Demonstrated experience within banking or regulated financial services environments
• Strong understanding of regulatory, risk, and governance frameworks

AI & Engineering Capability

• Proven track record delivering production AI systems, including:

  • RAG-based knowledge and document intelligence platforms
  • Natural language data access (e.g., Text-to-SQL)
  • AI-powered assistants and agent frameworks

• Experience delivering solutions such as:

  • Pipelines ingesting collaboration and enterprise content into vectorised indexes
  • Agent-based front ends for interacting with internal systems
  • AI solutions supporting regulatory, risk, or financial reporting functions

Technical Expertise

• Hands-on expertise across:
  • Azure AI ecosystem (Azure OpenAI, AI Search, Databricks, Foundry)
  • CI/CD-driven AI deployment and pipeline automation
  • API-led and distributed architectures

Leadership & Influence

• Strong communication skills with the ability to:
  • Engage and influence senior stakeholders
  • Translate technical concepts into business-relevant outcomes
• Demonstrated ability to drive adoption, not just delivery

Why This Role

This engagement offers a rare opportunity to shape how AI is operationalised at scale within a leading financial institution.

The successful candidate will combine deep technical expertise, delivery credibility, and executive influence to ensure AI becomes a core, trusted capability embedded within the organisation.

💬 We welcome conversations with individuals who have a proven track record of delivering AI solutions that are not only technically robust, but actively used, trusted, and delivering measurable value.