Principal AI Engineering Manager

Entity:

Technology

Job Family Group:

IT&S Group

Job Description:

This role leads AI engineering capability across Upstream and Downstream business domains within bp’s central digital delivery organisation. The Principal AI Engineer is responsible for managing a team of AI focused software engineers, owning the end-to-end delivery of AI-powered solutions from design through to production, and contributing to the broader AI engineering strategy for the function.

The role exists to accelerate bp’s adoption of applied AI by embedding technical leadership close to business domains, ensuring AI solutions are fit for purpose, scalable, and aligned with enterprise standards. As a senior leader in a growing AI capability, this individual plays a key role in shaping how AI engineering is practised across the organisation, in growing the talent pipeline for the discipline and line managing a team of high performing software engineers.

Key Accountabilities

• Lead and develop the skills of a team of software engineers, setting technical direction, fostering a culture of engineering excellence, and ensuring the team delivers high-quality AI solutions aligned to business domain needs.
• Own the end-to-end delivery of AI engineering programmes within assigned business domains, driving definition of requirements, solution design, iterative development, and production deployment.
• Partner with business stakeholders and product managers to translate domain challenges into well-scoped AI engineering initiatives, prioritising efforts that deliver measurable business value.
• Contribute to the overall AI engineering strategy for the function, establishing and promoting practices, standards, and patterns that improve the consistency and quality of AI solutions across teams.
• Manage relationships with internal and external engineering resources, including contracted and offshore teams, ensuring delivery quality and alignment with technical standards.
• Collaborate with platform, data, and architecture teams to ensure AI solutions are built on sound foundations and integrate appropriately with the broader enterprise technology landscape.

• Demonstrable experience leading and managing software or AI engineering teams in a production environment, with accountability for team performance, technical quality, and delivery outcomes.
• Strong software engineering background, including proficiency in modern programming languages and software development practices (e.g., version control, CI/CD, automated testing).
• Hands‑on experience delivering AI or machine learning solutions at scale, including model development, deployment, and ongoing operations (MLOps).
• Experience with large language models (LLMs), generative AI techniques, or agentic AI frameworks applied to real‑world business problems.
• Track record of managing multi‑stakeholder programmes, balancing business priorities with technical constraints and engineering quality.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present technical concepts clearly to non‑technical partners and senior leadership.
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, or a related technical subject area.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience operating in the energy sector or another complex industrial or commodities environment.
• Familiarity with enterprise data platforms, SaaS integration, or data mesh/fabric architectural patterns.
• Prior exposure to AI applications in operational, trading, or engineering domains (e.g., optimisation, forecasting, natural language interfaces to enterprise data).
• Formal training or certification in AI/ML (e.g., AWS Machine Learning Specialty, Google Professional ML Engineer, or equivalent).

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