Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering – AI, MLOps & Cloud Platforms

Permanent | Senior Engineering Leadership | National Security & Defence

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Head of Engineering to join a growing technology consultancy specialising in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and modern cloud-native engineering.

Working at the intersection of software engineering, Dev Ops and MLOps, the business helps organisations take innovative ideas from early-stage research and prototyping through to scalable, production-ready technology solutions within the National Security & Defence industry.

We're looking for a technically credible engineering leader who can combine hands-on Dev Ops and software engineering expertise with strong people leadership, architectural ownership and commercial awareness.

This isn't a purely strategic leadership position. You'll remain close to the technology, guiding engineering decisions, solving complex delivery challenges and helping shape the company's longer-term technical direction.

For someone with broader CTO-level experience, there is significant scope to influence technology strategy and the future growth of the engineering function.

You'll take responsibility for engineering delivery, technical standards and the continued development of a growing engineering capability.

Key responsibilities include:

* Leading, mentoring and developing a multidisciplinary team of software, platform and Dev Ops engineers.

* Defining technical architecture and engineering standards across cloud-native applications, AI/ML platforms and supporting infrastructure.

* Overseeing the design, development and deployment of production-grade solutions into customer environments.

* Providing technical leadership across Dev Ops, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, application development and MLOps.

* Ensuring software quality, reliability, scalability and security throughout the development lifecycle.

* Collaborating with senior stakeholders, delivery teams and external engineering partners to maintain high technical standards.

* Making informed architectural decisions around technology selection, build-versus-buy, performance, cost and scalability.

* Contributing to broader business strategy, technical roadmaps and commercial discussions.

Technical Experience

We're particularly interested in engineering leaders with a strong foundation in Dev Ops, cloud infrastructure and modern software development.

Relevant experience includes:

* Dev Ops & Platform Engineering: CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes and cloud-native deployment practices.

* Cloud Technologies: AWS, Azure or GCP, including architecture, infrastructure automation and production operations.

* Software Engineering:
Python, APIs, modern development frameworks, Git, automated testing and software delivery best practices.

* AI / ML / MLOps:
Experience supporting or delivering machine learning platforms, model deployment, ML pipelines or production AI applications.

* Architecture:
Designing scalable, secure and reliable solutions across software, infrastructure and data platforms.

* Engineering Leadership:
Managing engineers, establishing development standards, mentoring technical teams and taking ownership of delivery.

Exposure to Large Language Models, retrieval-augmented generation, model orchestration or other emerging AI technologies would be advantageous.

About You

We're looking for someone who has progressed from a strong technical engineering background into a leadership role, without losing their enthusiasm for hands-on technology.

You'll ideally bring:

* SC or DV Clearance,

* Experience working within Defence or National Security.

* Proven experience leading engineering teams and taking responsibility for…