AI Technical Lead

Company Description

IAG.ai is a new growing team within the International Airlines Group (British Airways, Iberia, Vueling, Aer Lingus, IAG Loyalty, IAG Cargo, with a mission to accelerate time to value and our market position through the use of Artificial Intelligence, work with, and in Multiple Operating Companies. We are seeking a talented and analytical Solution Lead to join our IAG.ai team. As a Solution Lead, you will play a crucial role in leveraging data to uncover valuable insights, drive data-driven decision-making, and support our organization’s goals.

Job Description

The AI Technical Lead works in a focused business area that has funding associated with it. They work with product and delivery leads and typically across multiple product teams to deliver value. They identify this value using Business epics that capture the value statements, business pain points and solution approach. Each of these business epics will then be refined into Features, working with the product teams. The AI Technical Lead will look for reuse, and they will apply established patterns for AI development to help realise the value statements. They will also guide the Product and Delivery leads as to the viability of the solution and potential work effort areas needed in terms of T-Shirt Sizing.

Qualifications

The role focuses on supporting the technical leads in each of the product teams aligned to that Initiative. They should have a diverse range of engineering skills (such as Data Science /ML / AI Models / Cloud Platforms), and they must have technical knowledge and experience of creating data-intensive solutions within secure domains. The other key area of this role is to be able to interlock with domain knowledge across the Operating Companies of IAG (OpCos) and form trusted relationships with principle architects. They should support the Senior AI and Data Science Manager to identify repeatable patterns, improving overall solution engineering discipline and efficiency. Additionally, they will ensure engineering patterns are identified and approved prior to use and that guardrails have been followed (such as Ethics, Legal, Architectural governance, and Cyber security). 

They should have strong experience of Architecture in a Global Enterprise setting and be able to communicate their solutions using established architectural principles. They should provide input to identifying the value in the business epics including T-Shirt level estimation of the work required to deliver providing input to the Product & Delivery leads.
The Technical Lead should be able to identify the skill mix and utilisation of the product teams associated with the initiative backlog and identify any gaps.

Technical Lead specific responsibilities
• Provide Solution pattern input to Business epics
• Provide T-Shirt sizing input to Business epics
• Help identify initial Features under the Business epics
• Support the further refinement of Features within the product teams
• Experience with ML / AI solutions and cloud infrastructure
• Ensure high standards of quality, security, and technical delivery are met in the engineering teams 
• Encourage a strong product mindset in the initiative engineering teams
• Provide industry solution awareness
• Expand knowledge of group solutions
• Encourage creative thinking and value based solution design
• Coach product teams on effective engineering
• Reinforce product mindset and ways of working
• Encourage Confluence aș a single way to document and represent engineering
• Ensure solutions are approved for use
• Escalate issues and risks to Senior Solution lead effectively and clearly
• Own issues that are specific to the initiative

Generic Technical Lead Terms of Reference
You’ll support your team by determining the optimal technical and engineering approach to building, operating, securing, generating data and insight from, and maintaining one or more Products. You’ll champion the value of investment in technology through plain English dialectic and evidence-based reasoning. You’ll support the Product Strategy through creation of an aligned technical blueprint whose transition states represent incremental value release.
You’ll be the ultimate determinant of “how” the Product(s) are built, in a way that ensures value, usability and viability.
This role is not just an Engineering or Technical role – it is the “go to” role for support in determining decisions (technical or otherwise).

Accountabilities
Key Solution Aspects
• Supporting the other members of the team by providing structured thinking where necessary in Key Decisioning (technical or otherwise).
• Ensuring all Key Decisions (technical or otherwise) have the necessary diligence applied to them (i.e. using the Decisioning Framework and/or the relevant Design Authority). 
• Ensuring that all identified Risks & Debt (technical, enterprise or otherwise) are appropriately captured and actively supporting the management of such.
• Designing the team’s Information architecture. 
Technical
• Creating appropriate blueprints (i.e. architectural, technical) aligned to the Product Strategy and Roadmap
• Ensuring technical considerations (in Stories) are given appropriate priority and consideration in sprints and delivery planning
• Ensuring that documented engineering and technical standards are in place, including quality standards, and that auditable evidence of compliance is available
• Accountable for a test approach aligned to the “north star” of zero manual testing (across NFRs, Stories and acceptance tests, compatibility testing, smoke testing, first occurrence validation, SAST, DAST, accessibility testing, etc.)
• Ensures code is developed in a secure way, with up to date reporting on the state of any vulnerabilities and associated remediation
• Ensures there is auditable evidence that all agreed requirements (Business, NFRs, Policies, etc) are met
• Ensures no manual effort is required to technically propagate the solution to production
o Automated deployments
o Automated validation
• (With Product Lead, Delivery Lead) Ensures operational and security requirements are played appropriately early (“Hello World”) and that auditable evidence that these requirements have been met is available
• Ensures there is a clear, documented understanding of route to live process and approved tooling within the team
• Owns the plan for improving engineering effectiveness, increasing automation, and increasing the take-up of DevSecOps
• Builds strong relationships with our downstream service suppliers, ensuring our engineering requirements are met or exceeded
Leadership
• Maintain and provide insights on the view of the engineers and their level of engagement.
• Establishes psychological safety.
• Mentors and inspires a number of direct reports.

Additional Information

Benefits

The chance to enjoy a challenging career in an exciting, fast-moving environment in a dynamic industry, working in a multi-cultural environment with great offices in many locations. We aim to provide all our people with a work/life balance, as well as the many benefits offered by a global organisation, including health insurance, pension, and performance bonuses.

Diversity and Inclusion

IAG Tech is part of the IAG GBS organisation, and our people are at the heart of everything we do. We recognise that we can only deliver the required business outcomes if we have a thriving community of technology professionals. Together we strive to become the very best at what we do.

We focus on making Tech a great place to work, with a community that we feel proud to belong to. To help make this a reality, our people strategy focuses on six key domains: Engagement, Talent Management, Reward and Recognition, Performance Management, Learning and Development and Culture.

We understand the importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace to deliver this strategy – everyone should feel part of our team. We want to foster an inclusive workplace, celebrate individuality and embrace differences so that everyone in IAG Tech can achieve their goals and ambitions, regardless of their personal circumstances or background.

As a Group, IAG has an ambition that 40% of senior management roles are held by women by 2025. IAG Tech fully supports that ambition, and we are working to help make it a reality. With this in mind, we have set ourselves the challenging target of recruiting 50% female colleagues by 2030.