Principal AI​/ML Manager

Collinson is the global, privately‑owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market‑leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers. Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme.

Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special. We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide. We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP.

Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences. Key clients include Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, Easy Jet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC. Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.

Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 2,200 global colleagues.

Collinson’s Travel Experience division has an ambitious roadmap to deliver customer centric global solutions with consideration for regional difference.

We are seeking a Principal AI/ML Engineer to architect, build, and ope rationalise the next generation of AI solutions s role will combine deep technical engineering expertise with strategic leadership to ensure AI is delivered at scale, with robustness, transparency, and measurable business impact.

As the technical authority in AI engineering, you will own the design and delivery of production‑grade AI/ML systems, lead best practices in automation and observability, and help Collinson establish a trusted, enterprise‑ready AI platform. The Principal AI/ML Engineer will work closely with the Head of AI Labs to design and ope rationalise advanced AI solutions, ensuring Collinson’s AI initiatives deliver measurable business impact.

• Lead the design and delivery of end‑to‑end AI/ML pipelines, ensuring solutions are scalable, resilient, and aligned with business objectives.
• Develop and deploy advanced ML, DL, and LLM models, including RAG pipelines, agentic AI architectures, and evaluation frameworks such as LLM‑as‑a‑Judge.
• Integrate AI capabilities into enterprise platforms and products in a governed, model‑agnostic, and future‑proof manner.
• Implement monitoring and observability to manage drift, bias, fairness, and performance, with clear processes for escalation and retraining.
• Establish guardrails for responsible AI adoption, covering explainability, bias detection, security, and compliance.
• Mentor and guide engineers to strengthen expertise in ML engineering, orchestration frameworks, and modern AI practices.
• Communicate AI/ML system behaviours, risks, and outcomes effectively to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Collaborate with the Head of AI Labs to translate AI research and strategy into production‑grade engineering solutions.

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• PhD in a relevant discipline is advantageous but not required.

• Proven ability to design and product ionise retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and agentic AI architectures, with practical use of Model Context Protocol (MCP) and evaluation frameworks such as LLM‑as‑a‑Judge.
• Hands‑on experience building agent‑based AI solutions using orchestration…