Principal AI Engineer – Lead Colleague AI Transformation

About the role

Deloitte is looking for a hands‑on Principal AI Engineer to lead the Colleague AI transformation within its Financial Services practice. Based in central London with a hybrid schedule, you will act as the technical right‑hand for the Automation & AI practice, turning experimental AI projects into a governed, scalable delivery capability.

Key responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership for Colleague AI initiatives such as the Sierra PoC and Claude roll‑out, owning architecture and design.
• Build agentic AI solutions for internal colleagues, covering use‑cases like complaint triage, help‑desk assistants, inbox routing and QA/QC.
• Define and embed AI engineering standards, reference architectures and reusable patterns, working with infrastructure teams to manage shadow AI usage.
• Lead AI literacy and enablement programmes across Digital and the wider business.
• Mentor the Automation Practice team and support the transition to a permanent in‑house AI Engineering Manager.
• Represent the practice in cross‑functional forums, translating AI strategy into delivery road‑maps and measurable outcomes.

Required profile

• Deep, hands‑on technical leadership experience at Principal or Lead level.
• Strong expertise in generative AI, large language models and agentic architectures, with proven production delivery in regulated environments (financial services preferred).
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, able to engage from board level to engineers.
• Experience mentoring and up‑skilling technical teams.

Required skills

• Generative AI and LLM technologies
• Microsoft Copilot Studio and Copilot Foundry
• AWS Bedrock and AgentCore
• LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, Strands
• Microsoft Azure and AWS cloud ecosystems
• SSO/OIDC federation and data residency controls
• Claude (Anthropic), OpenAI and Microsoft Copilot families
• AI testing disciplines (accuracy, hallucination, bias, prompt evaluation)
• AI governance and risk considerations (DPIA, data classification, FCA)

What we offer

• Very competitive day rate, Inside IR35
• Hybrid working – 2/3 days in the office, the rest remote
• Opportunity to shape a new AI capability within a leading professional services firm