AI Operations Lead

Salary: up to £60,000 per year

Remote, UK

Are you looking for an AI Operations Lead role in a fast-growing business where people are at the heart of everything we do?

Would you like to work within a socially conscious organisation that is making a real impact in the education sector?

The Key Group serves school leaders and trusts across the UK providing authoritative guidance and intuitive tools that support school leadership.

We work across the full diversity of schools and locations, from small rural and coastal primaries to the largest trusts and local authorities in the country.

We recognise that each school and trust is on a journey and school leaders need to identify their specific context, their own path and the next step in that journey. This process requires more than just shared values in a school, it requires the knowledge, data, context and confidence to bring others with you in effecting change.

That's why we're here. We put the power back in the hands of those leading our schools and trusts, by equipping them with remarkable products & services. The Key Group is home to 5 brands, each the leading provider in its category including Arbor, Scholar Pack, Integris, The Key and Governor Hub. Nearly 600 colleagues deliver our award-winning services and serve 19,000 schools.

At The Key Group, we are accelerating our digital transformation by embedding enterprise AI into the heart of our operations. We are seeking an AI Operations Lead to act as the central operational hub for our enterprise AI platforms, gateway administration, workflow automation and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations.

Rather than a pure software development role, this position balances operational agility with strict governance. You will bridge technical engineering, risk functions, and end-users—ensuring our AI technologies deliver safe, cost-effective and measurable value across the enterprise.

• AI Gateway & Platform Administration:
  Oversee the daily operations of our AI gateway (e.g., LiteLLM), managing model routing, rate limits, cataloguing, fallback pathways and access permissions across third-party models like Anthropic and Amazon Bedrock
• Workflow Automation & Optimisation:
  Build and maintain low-code automations (e.g. n8n) integrating enterprise applications with approved AI services, converting manual processes into secure, auditable, human-in-the-loop workflows
• AI Agent & MCP Integration:
  Configure, test and deploy AI agents and MCP connections. Enforce least-privilege access across agent knowledge bases while monitoring production behaviour to ensure security and prevent hallucinations
• Governance, Risk & Compliance:
  Enforce AI governance policies across all models, agents and workflows. Maintain full audit trails and support legal, risk and privacy teams with AI impact assessments and data residency checks
• Monitoring, Reporting & Cost Control:
  Track token consumption, API spend and usage budgets across external providers. Implement quotas and alert thresholds to ensure usage remains optimized and within budget
• Service Operations & Support:
  Serve as the primary point of contact for access requests, incidents and operational changes. Maintain runbooks, manage vendor SLAs and resolve platform issues swiftly
• Enablement & Community:
  Onboard and upskill internal teams on prompt structure and responsible AI tools, fostering a company-wide Community of Practice

• Proven track record in technology operations, platform administration, application support or service management
• Hands-on experience administering AI platforms/gateways (e.g. LiteLLM) or SaaS automation tools (e.g. n8n, Make, Power Automate)
• Solid understanding of REST APIs, webhooks, JSON…