AI Lead Engineer

About us

Were the team behind digital retailer Very.

Our purpose helping families get more out of life powers everything we do.

And we want our people to get more out of life too! If youre high-performing ambitious and make the most of every opportunity we want to hear from return youll enjoy heaps of flexibility great perks and benefits and the freedom to be yourself keep learning and take your career wherever you want it to go.

If you love making a difference youll love making it sparkle for millions of Very customers.

About the team

This role sits within our Agentic Platforms team one of the most exciting and forward-looking squads in Platform Engineering right now.

Were building the AI infrastructure that will underpin Verys next generation of intelligent products and experiences. This is a greenfield space which means real influence: youll help define how we architect build and operate agentic AI platforms at scale.

About the role

This is one of the most technically demanding and impactful engineering roles within Very.

Youll be the technical authority on agentic AI platform architecture the person the squad turns to for leadership guidance and decisive direction. Working closely with our Senior Engineering Manager AI Technical Product Owner and Performance Unit Architects youll shape both what we build and how we build it.

Youll have the opportunity to tackle challenges that simply dont exist in smaller organisations. From designing AI gateways and LLM integrations to building the cloud-native platform foundations they run on youll be solving problems that have a tangible impact on the business and the customers we serve.

What makes this role particularly exciting is the depth of ownership. Youll remain hands-on with the code while defining engineering strategy championing best practices and driving technical excellence across the squad.

Youll be shaping the future of AI engineering at Very by:

• Designing building and evolving our Agentic AI platform spanning frontend tooling AI gateways and backend LLM integrations with a focus on reliability security and scale
• Acting as the technical decision-maker for all AI platform architecture within the squad setting the patterns and practices others will follow
• Leading code reviews system design sessions and technology spikes that push the platform forward and raise standards across the team
• Working directly with the AI Technical Product Owner to translate requirements into clear prioritised technical deliverables
• Owning system SLAs metrics and monitoring for the platforms under your care and leading RCA investigations when things dont go to plan
• Driving improvements to our CI/CD pipelines and championing DevSecOps practices across the squad
• Coaching and mentoring engineers across the squad from junior to senior growing their AWS and Terraform capability through hands-on guidance
• Collaborating with Performance Unit Architects and Engineering Managers to ensure the AI platform stays aligned with the wider technology roadmap
• Proactively managing technical risk and tech debt shaping the long-term evolution of the platforms architecture
• Sharing your expertise internally and externally helping to build Verys engineering brand and reputation

About you

Youll be an experienced cloud platform engineer with deep hands-on expertise in AWS and Infrastructure as Code and youll have taken that expertise into the world of AI.

Youll bring serious technical depth alongside the ability to influence mentor and inspire. Youre passionate about engineering excellence and you care about the people around you as much as the technology itself.

Were particularly interested in engineers who have:

• Experience in a Senior or Principal AWS Platform Engineering role
• Hands-on Infrastructure as Code development using Terraform you should be expert-level and proud of it
• Proven hands-on experience designing building and maintaining Agentic AI platforms you understand frontend tooling AI gateways and how to connect them to LLM backends
• Demonstrable expert-level knowledge of AWS including VPC EC2 ECS ECR Fargate S3 Route 53 RDS DynamoDB API Gateway Lambda Transit Gateway EBS EFS AWS Config and the AWS CLI
• Strong GitLab CI skills from a pipeline development and administration perspective; GitLab admin experience is a real advantage
• Solid AWS security tooling experience and a security-first engineering mindset
• Development experience in Python and/or other languages you can write the code not just the infrastructure around it
• Excellent Linux administration skills
• A track record of defining best practices technical standards and platform design at enterprise scale
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain complex ideas simply to engineers and non-technical stakeholders alike
• Extensive experience managing relationships with internal and external stakeholders
• A thorough understanding of AWS cost optimisation techniques and the mindset to operate cloud infrastructure efficiently

Most importantly youll enjoy being the person who makes the team stronger the platform better and the technology more impactful.

Some of our benefits

• Flexible hybrid working model
• Inclusive culture and environment check out our Glassdoor reviews

• 6500 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
• 30days holiday bank holidays
• LinkedIn Learning access
• Bonus potential (performance and business-related)
• Up to 25% discount on

• Matched pension up to 6%
• More benefits can be foundon our career site

How to apply

Please note that the talent acquisition team are managing this vacancy directly and if successful in securing this role you will be required to undertake a credit CIFAS Right to Work checks and if a specific requirement of your role a DBS (criminal records) check. Should your application progress we require you to let the team know if there is anything you need to disclose in relation to any of these checks prior to them being undertaken including any unspent criminal convictions.

What happens next

Our talent acquisition team will be in touch if youre successful so keep an eye on your emails! Well arrange a short call to learn more about you as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like were a good match well share your CV with the hiring manager to review. Our interview process is tailored to each role and can be in-person or held remotely.

You can expect a one stage interview process for this position:

1st stage - A one hour face-to-face interview with the hiring team to discuss your skills and relevant experience competency questions. This is also a great opportunity to find out more about the role and to ask any questions you may have.

As an inclusive employer please do let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.

If youd like to know more about our interviews you can find out here.

Diversity inclusion and equal opportunities

Werebuilding a culture of everyday inclusion and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We dont discriminate based on age disability gender reassignment marriage or civil partnership pregnancy or maternity race religion or belief sex or sexual orientation.

We want our recruitment process to be accessible to everyone. If you need reasonable adjustments to apply interview or perform a role let us know via Well be happy to support you.

Were proud to be aDisability Confident Committed Employerand have nine brilliant colleague networks - including DAWN (Disability Awareness at Very) and Think (Neurodiversity at Very) - that are helping us make Very an even more inclusive place to work.

Required Experience:

Senior IC