Lead Developer – Model Developer Environment

Robert Half is looking for an interim Lead Developer to join one of our global consulting clients, who are expanding due to increased demand and fully utilised FTE capacity. This role will sit within their consulting delivery team, supporting key financial services and banking clients. The assignment focuses on designing and building an advanced model developer environment for containerised model deployments on AWS SageMaker, with GenAI/agentic capabilities embedded into the platform. You will also lead a team of four developers and collaborate closely with data engineering, data science and platform teams. Assignment Details • Initial Duration: 6 months (strong likelihood of extension) • Location: Hybrid/London • Day Rate: £flexible PAYE Day Rate (plus 12.07% holiday pay) – PAYE with employer’s NI & tax deducted at source, unlike umbrella companies and no umbrella admin fees. This role suits a Lead Developer with deep cloud engineering expertise across Python, containerisation and ML platform build-outs, plus strong leadership capability. Key Skills and Experience • Banking experience is essential • Strong software engineering background with expert Python • Hands-on experience with GitLab CI/CD • Extensive Docker containerisation & runtime experience • Strong understanding of AWS SageMaker deployments • Experience building developer environments for ML/quant/data-intensive workflows • Knowledge of monitoring, logging, reporting and test automation • Proven team leadership of small development teams • Strong understanding of data ingestion, preprocessing and transformation • Experience embedding GenAI or agentic frameworks is highly desirable • Familiarity with model lifecycle, versioning and governance • Exposure to workflow orchestration tools (Kepler / Kepler GenAI / Galileo) a plus Screening Requirements: All candidates must complete standard screening (Right to Work, DBS, credit/sanctions, employment verification). This is an excellent opportunity for a Lead Developer to join a high-performing consulting team and play a key role in shaping and delivering a next-generation developer environment for a major UK financial services organisation.