Lead Machine Learning Engineer

Lead Machine Learning Engineer London (remote) | £90,000 to £95,000FTC role

A rare opportunity to take ownership of Machine Learning Engineering within a large, established organisation that is genuinely investing in data and AI. This role offers the chance to lead ML engineering capability, productionise high-impact use cases, and shape how machine learning is delivered at scale across the business.

The Company

They are a well-established UK organisation with a strong reputation for combining technical excellence with a people-first mindset. With a nationwide presence and a long-standing history, they are now accelerating their investment in modern data platforms, cloud technologies, and applied AI. The data function has strong executive backing and is transitioning to a modern Azure-based lakehouse architecture to support scalable analytics and machine learning.

The Role

As Lead Machine Learning Engineer, you will take technical ownership of ML engineering and play a key role in building out the wider capability.

Key responsibilities include:

• Leading the design and delivery of end-to-end machine learning pipelines aligned to business priorities.
• Productionising existing ML and NLP proof-of-concepts and scaling them into robust, supported solutions.
• Implementing best practices across MLOps, data pipelines, model deployment, and monitoring.
• Working closely with Data Scientists to support model development, maintenance, and optimisation.
• Supporting large-scale data processing use cases, including unstructured document and NLP workloads.
• Contributing as a technical thought leader within an agile, engineering-led environment.
• Supporting cloud migration, data integration, and platform evolution in Azure and Databricks.

Your Skills and Experience

You will be a highly hands-on engineer with strong commercial experience delivering machine learning solutions into production.

Essential experience:

• Strong software engineering background with hands-on ML Engineering delivery.
• Python and SQL in production environments.
• Azure and Databricks for data and machine learning workloads.
• NLP and LLM use cases, including fine-tuning and deployment.
• Building and maintaining production ML pipelines and MLOps processes.
• Stakeholder engagement and the ability to translate business needs into technical solutions.
• 7-8 years experience

Desirable experience:

• API development using FastAPI or similar frameworks.
• Architectural exposure alongside hands-on delivery.
• End-to-end platform or product delivery experience.

What They Offer

• Salary of £90,000, with flexibility up to £95,000 for the right candidate.
• Annual bonus and comprehensive benefits package.
• 25 days annual leave with the option to purchase more.
• Private medical insurance, health cashback plan, digital GP service, life assurance, and income protection.
• 35-hour working week with flexible start and finish times.
• Primarily remote working with occasional office attendance.
• Initially offered as a fixed-term contract with strong potential to become permanent.

How to Apply

If you are an experienced ML Engineer looking to lead, build, and scale machine learning capability in a supportive and forward-thinking environment, apply now to learn more about this opportunity.