Engineering Lead - AI, Cloud & National Security

Our exciting client is seeking an Engineering Lead to build and lead small, high-performing Agile teams (4-8 engineers) delivering secure, scalable solutions within the UK National Security (NatSec) domain

Engineering Lead - AI, Cloud & National Security

Package - £110,000 - £120,000 + dv bonus + excellent package

Location - Cheltenham - Hybrid

Clearance - eDV Clearance Required

Overview

This is a hands-on leadership role combining architecture, software engineering, and team leadership, with a focus on Software, AI, data platforms, and cloud-native systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor Agile engineering teams, driving high-quality, rapid delivery (DevSecOps)
• Own solution architecture, designing for secure and constrained environments.
• Lead the implementation of the \"underpinning tech\" for AI, including data pipelines.
• Act as a trusted advisor to UK Government stakeholders.
• Define technical roadmaps and support cloud transformation (AWS/Azure)

Core Skills

• Background in UK National Security / Defence / Government.
• Strong leadership experience in software engineering teams.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or Java (+ TypeScript/Node.js desirable)
• Expertise in AWS or Azure, Terraform, and Kubernetes (EKS/AKS)
• Strong grounding in SQL (Postgres) and NoSQL (MongoDB/DynamoDB)
• Experience with CI/CD, microservices, TDD/BDD.
• Knowledge of secure system design.

Desirable (AI & Data)

• Vector DBs: Milvus, Weaviate, Pinecone
• Data orchestration: Airflow, Prefect, Dagster
• Search: ElasticSearch / OpenSearch
• AI frameworks: LangChain, Hugging Face
• MLOps: MLflow, Kubeflow

If you are looking for an opportunity to work on mission-critical systems at the forefront of UK National Security? Apply now or get in touch for a confidential conversation.

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