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.
