Job Summary

The Head of AI Engineering leads the engineering organization responsible for the bank's AI factory platform, providing end-to-end ownership of platform architecture, software engineering, AI operations, and service delivery. the role drives the development of enterprise AI capabilities, ensures platform reliability and compliance, and enables the scalable adoption of AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI solutions across the bank through strong engineering leadership and operational excellence

Key Responsibilities – Head of AI Engineering
Strategic Engineering Leadership & Innovation
•    Define and execute the AI Engineering strategy to build and operate the Bank's AI Factory platform, enabling scalable delivery of AI, Machine Learning, Generative AI, and Agentic AI solutions.
•    Lead the engineering roadmap for enterprise AI capabilities including Model Hosting, RAG Platforms, Agent Frameworks, AI Workspaces, AI Lifecycle Services, and Developer Tooling.
•    Drive standardization, automation, and engineering best practices to accelerate AI solution delivery across the Bank.
•    Evaluate emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and engineering patterns to continuously improve platform capabilities and developer productivity.
•    Partner with Product, Architecture, and Business stakeholders to translate strategic objectives into scalable engineering solutions.

AI Platform Architecture & Engineering Delivery
•    Lead the architecture, design, development, and operation of secure, scalable, and resilient AI Factory platforms across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.
•    Establish engineering standards, reference architectures, reusable frameworks, APIs, and development patterns for AI/ML, GenAI, RAG, and Agentic AI solutions.
•    Own end-to-end platform delivery, including infrastructure provisioning, AI development environments, model deployment, inference services, and platform operations.
•    Drive adoption of modern software engineering practices including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, release management, and platform automation.
•    Ensure platform scalability, availability, performance, reliability, and operational resilience through robust engineering and architecture practices.

Key Responsibilities

AI Operations, MLOps & Reliability Engineering
•    Establish and lead MLOps, LLMOps, and Platform Engineering capabilities covering model deployment, monitoring, observability, evaluation, performance optimization, and operational support.
•    Implement engineering controls for platform reliability, incident management, disaster recovery, capacity planning, and production support.
•    Drive engineering excellence through metrics, automation, telemetry, and continuous improvement initiatives.
•    Ensure AI platforms operate with appropriate service levels, support models, operational procedures, and recovery mechanisms.
•    Lead engineering readiness for enterprise-scale AI adoption through automation, self-service capabilities, and operational tooling.

Security, Controls & Engineering Risk Management
•    Embed security-by-design principles across AI Factory engineering processes and platform services.
•    Partner with Cyber Security (ICS), Infrastructure, Risk, and Architecture teams to ensure engineering solutions meet enterprise security and compliance requirements.
•    Implement technical controls supporting AI governance, data protection, access management, monitoring, and auditability requirements.
•    Drive remediation of engineering-related control gaps, vulnerabilities, technical debt, and operational risks.
•    Ensure responsible AI guardrails, monitoring solutions, and safety mechanisms are engineered into platform capabilities.

Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Delivery
•    Collaborate closely with Product Management, Architecture, Infrastructure, Data, Operations, Security, and Business teams to deliver enterprise AI capabilities.
•    Provide technical leadership and guidance for strategic AI programmes and large-scale engineering initiatives.
•    Support executive governance forums through engineering insights, delivery reporting, platform health metrics, and technology roadmaps.
•    Drive alignment across global engineering teams, ensuring consistent engineering standards, delivery practices, and operational processes.

People Leadership & Engineering Capability Development
•    Build, lead, and develop high-performing engineering teams across AI Engineering, Platform Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, and DevOps functions.
•    Foster a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, accountability, automation, and continuous learning.
•    Establish engineering career frameworks, succession plans, and talent development programmes.
•    Mentor senior engineers and engineering leaders while driving technical excellence across the organization.
•    Lead geographically distributed engineering teams and create a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture.

Regulatory & Business Conduct
•    Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct. 
•    Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.
•    Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.

Key stakeholders
•    TTO Management Team
•    T&A Management Team
•    CDO
•    Software Engineering Platform Teams
•    Business, Regional & Country CIOs & COOs
•    Operational, Technology & Cyber Risk 
•    Chief Data Office
•    Group and Country Compliance & Regulators 
•    Group Internal Audit
•    Group Operational Risk

Skills and Experience

•    Hands on with AI platform development and monitoring
•    Hands on with ML framework, best practices and ops implementation
•    Hands-on experience with GPU computing and optimization for AI workloads
•    Hands-on experience with design and implementation of sophisticated data catalogue
•    Programming languages such as Python, Java, or C++.

Qualifications

•    15+ years of technology leadership experience in Software Engineering, AI/ML Platforms, Cloud Engineering, Distributed Systems, or Enterprise Technology organizations.
•    Proven experience leading large-scale engineering organizations responsible for building and operating enterprise platforms and products.
•    Deep expertise in AI Platform Engineering, Software Engineering, MLOps, LLMOps, Platform Operations, and Cloud-Native Architecture.
•    Demonstrated success building and operating enterprise AI platforms supporting Machine Learning, Generative AI, Agentic AI, and advanced analytics workloads at scale.
•    Strong hands-on understanding of distributed systems, microservices, API platforms, infrastructure automation, observability, reliability engineering, and platform security.
•    Experience designing and delivering enterprise AI capabilities including model hosting, RAG platforms, AI development environments, inference services, model lifecycle management, and reusable AI services.
•    Proven delivery of enterprise-grade platforms within highly regulated environments, with strong appreciation for security, resiliency, audit, and compliance requirements.
•    Experience implementing CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and modern software delivery practices.
•    Strong understanding of cybersecurity controls, identity and access management, operational resilience, and engineering risk management.
•    Proven ability to build, mentor, and scale high-performing engineering organizations across multiple regions.
•    Exceptional stakeholder management skills with experience influencing senior technology leaders, architects, risk functions, and executive stakeholders.
•    Experience leading global engineering teams delivering mission-critical technology platforms across multiple geographies and time zones.

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.