AI Specialist (AI Foundry)

We are looking for an experienced AI Specialist (AI Foundry) with Function Data & AI 10+ years of experience to take end-to-end ownership. • Translate complex concepts into clear guidance for executives and governance forums. • Contribute to AI strategy, roadmap and horizon‑scanning, informing investment and risk posture. • Provide insight to support business cases, investment decisions, risk assessments, and prioritization discussions at AI governance forums. • Lead enterprise‑wide assurance for high‑risk AI systems, conducting deep reviews, assessing model and agent behaviour under stress conditions, identifying systemic risks, and recommending design‑level mitigations to ensure solutions remain robust, ethical and compliant. • Serve as the subject matter expert on AI technologies, including large language models (LLMs) and agentic AI, providing insights and recommendations to support business cases and investment decisions. • Lead exploration and proof‑of‑concepts for multi‑agent, tool‑using and semi‑autonomous workflows. • Define enterprise AI patterns for orchestration, prompt governance, vector search, memory and agent frameworks. • Act as a key influencer and advisor to senior management and governance forums, providing expert guidance on AI-related decisions and strategies. • Advise on model selection, prompting strategies, data approaches and trade‑offs for safe, high‑performing solutions. • Mentor and develop AI capabilities within the organization, uplifting the skills and expertise of delivery resources and ensuring the successful implementation of AI initiatives • Shape and govern agentic AI patterns (memory, planning, tool use, autonomy constraints, escalation). • Guide RAG implementations, vector databases, embedding pipelines and content governance models. • Ensure strong data foundations (quality, lineage, metadata, privacy, access controls) for AI workloads. • Drive cross‑functional technical AI enablement by developing advanced tooling, accelerators and evaluation frameworks, enabling teams to experiment safely, adopt best‑practice AI patterns, and scale AI delivery with higher consistency and lower technical debt. • Provide robust technical challenge of vendors and models with evidence, benchmarking and risk assessment. • Define standards, guardrails, and reusable frameworks for Copilot/LLM/agentic solutions. • Support delivery of high‑risk/novel initiatives as a deep technical contributor and escalation point. • Mentor delivery resources to uplift AI capability. • Managing escalations and deputising for Senior Manager where required, and supporting the wider Data & AI Leadership team. • Translate Divisional priorities into plans and deliverables to deliver overall Group strategic priorities. • Build the capability & capacity of functional resources to drive sustained commercial success. • Interpret & communicate the priorities for the Function, motivating and developing a high performing team. • Own functional priorities, applying specialist expertise to put the customer at the heart of everything and drive a profitable business. • Initiate and develop critical external and internal relationships which create value, collaborating to deliver commercial and customer priorities. • Role model YBS Values, champion diversity and challenge behavior contrary to the Values • Identify, define & oversee management of risks associated with delivery across YBS. • Uphold corporate legal & regulatory responsibilities. • Implement and manage transformation activity & harness innovation to create a high performing & sustainable business. Functional/Technical (Role Specific) Essential • Higher education qualification (or equivalent experience) in Ethics, Law, Risk Management, Social Sciences, Data/Computer Science or relevant field • Proven experience applying deep technical expertise across AI, ML, LLMs, agentic AI, and applied AI engineering, driving the design, evaluation, and governance of advanced AI solutions • Proven experience designing, evaluating and governing multi‑agent systems, incorporating memory structures, tool‑use orchestration, planning algorithms and autonomy controls. • Demonstrated ability to benchmark LLM performance, evaluate model choices, run structured behavioural testing and interpret model outputs to inform safe and effective deployment. • Strong understanding of responsible AI principles, ethical risk, regulatory expectations, and mitigation strategies, and the ability to translate them into practical safeguards. • Strong understanding of cloud‑native AI solutions and proven experience delivering solutions on Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, ensuring alignment to enterprise standards, security controls and platform guardrails. • Demonstrated ability to engineer and optimise RAG’s, including vector database design, embedding strategies, retrieval optimisation and advanced orchestration patterns for accuracy and reliability. • Strong understanding of data engineering, governance, lineage, data quality and privacy frameworks, ensuring AI workloads are built on compliant, high‑integrity data foundations. • Proven experience designing secure, resilient and scalable AI, embedding security‑by‑design, operational guardrails and platform‑level controls. • Strong ability to challenge solution designs, model selections and vendor proposals, using evidence‑based critique, benchmarking and review. • Demonstrated ability to communicate complex AI, concepts in clear, concise terms for senior leaders, governance forums and non‑technical stakeholders. • Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in fast‑changing, ambiguous technical environments, providing clear direction, informed judgement and architectural leadership. • Proven experience mentoring uplifting AI capability and embedding repeatable best‑practice patterns across teams. • Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, including senior‑level engagement. • Commercial awareness and a value‑driven mindset. • Use of professional networks and external influencers with clear evidence of learning and development to build and maintain skills and expertise. Sector (desirable) • Understanding of financial services industry, markets and competitors • Understanding of how financial services organizations operate and the associated regulatory environment, or other regulated industries • Awareness of the Mutual Sector and the needs and interests of Members Commercial • Ability to work with autonomy and make operational decisions • Experience of delivering organisational change • Understanding of related functions and/or services outside of the role’s direct remit • Experience of managing a set of internal and external stakeholder relationships. Interpersonal • Good interpersonal skills and ability to build and maintain strong working relationships • Ability to work effectively in diverse teams • A problem-solving approach with curiosity and proactivity to engage and understand both the strategic business goals and our customer’s needs • Ability to identify areas of improvement and create innovative approaches to delivering better quality service. • Experience working in cross-functional teams and agile environments • Ability to identify, nurture and realise the potential in others • Strong communication, engagement and influencing skills • Ability to effectively represent YBS through building collaborative relationships.