Lead AI Engineer

Wenham Carter is proud to be supporting a global leader in industrial software in the search for a Lead AI Engineer to join a specialist AI Investigation & Incubation team.

This is a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of advanced AI research and real-world industrial application, taking emerging concepts and turning them into working, deployable systems that deliver measurable impact.

The organisation operates at global scale across energy, manufacturing, and asset-intensive industries, where reliability, performance, and operational feasibility are as important as innovation.

The role

This is a hands-on technical leadership position focused on exploring, validating, and prototyping next-generation AI capabilities.

You’ll be responsible for taking early-stage AI ideas and rapidly turning them into proof-of-concepts and pilots that can be assessed for real-world deployment.

Key focus areas include:

• Evaluating emerging AI technologies for practical industrial application
• Designing and building prototypes, PoCs, and pilot systems
• Developing, fine-tuning, and benchmarking advanced ML models
• Making architectural decisions around deployment, scalability, and integration
• Assessing solutions across cost, security, reliability, and operational feasibility
• Working closely with cross-functional teams to transition validated work into downstream product paths
• Communicating findings clearly to both technical and executive stakeholders
• Mentoring and supporting junior engineers in the team

Key requirements

• 10+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, including at least 4 years in a technical leadership role
• Strong academic background in Computer Science, AI/ML, Engineering, or related field
• Deep hands-on experience with Python and modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX)
• Proven track record delivering complex AI initiatives with tangible outcomes
• Experience working in industrial software, manufacturing, energy, IoT, or other asset-intensive environments is essential
• Strong experience with foundation models, multi-modal systems, agent-based architectures, and RAG techniques
• Ability to translate AI capabilities into real-world enterprise and industrial use cases
• Excellent communication skills, including engagement with senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams

Why this opportunity?

This is a chance to sit at the forefront of applied AI in one of the most complex and important industrial domains globally. You’ll have the freedom to explore emerging technologies, but also the responsibility to turn them into something real, scalable, and valuable.

If you’re excited by building at the edge of AI - and seeing your work move beyond the lab into production environments - this is a rare opportunity to do exactly that.

To stay updated on roles like this, follow me here on LinkedIn and send me a connection request.