VP of Data Engineering; AI​/ML

VP of Data Engineering (AI/ML) Manchester, UK | Hybrid | Up to £90K + bonus

A leading global financial services organisation are looking for a hands‑on VP of Data Engineering to focus on building the data platform and infrastructure that powers machine learning in production.

This is for a strong data engineering with AI/ML exposure, who has built robust data pipelines and platforms that ML teams depend on to ship models.

• Design, build, and evolve scalable data platforms and pipelines that enable AI and ML use cases in production
• Act as a senior hands‑on engineer within an agile POD, contributing directly to delivery day‑to‑day
• Partner closely with data scientists, ML engineers, software engineers, and product owners to deliver end‑to‑end data and AI solutions
• Engineer robust data ingestion, transformation, and serving capabilities using modern cloud‑native patterns
• Identify and resolve complex data issues, bringing strong analytical and problem‑solving skills to ambiguous situations
• Mentor and support less experienced engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing

• Solid data engineering foundations — pipelines, data platforms, ingestion, transformation, and serving at scale
• Hands‑on experience with Python and SQL in production environments
• Exposure to AI/ML workloads — you've built infrastructure that supports data scientists or ML engineers, even if you haven't been the one training models
• Comfortable operating as a senior individual contributor in an agile, product‑oriented team
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across cross‑functional teams