AI Evangelist - Fast growing retail organisation

SF Technology are supporting a high-growth, digitally led UK business looking to appoint an AI Evangelist to lead the next phase of its technology and AI capability.

This is a leadership role where you will define and deliver the organisation's AI and engineering strategy, while remaining close enough to the technology to guide architecture, development standards and infrastructure decisions.

You will lead a capable in-house engineering team responsible for the platforms, data pipelines and infrastructure that power a high-volume digital environment. Alongside this, you will drive the adoption of AI, machine learning and advanced data capabilities across core commercial and operational functions.

The role sits within the leadership team and will play a key part in shaping the company's wider digital, product and innovation strategy.

Key responsibilities

• Define and deliver a scalable AI and technology roadmap aligned to business growth
  
  
• Lead, mentor and grow a high-performing engineering and data team
  
  
• Oversee platform architecture, infrastructure, security and operational resilience
  
  
• Drive the development and deployment of AI and machine learning models into live business workflows
  
  
• Ensure engineering best practice across software development, testing and deployment
  
  
• Translate commercial objectives into robust, scalable technical solutions
  
  
• Work closely with senior leadership to influence digital strategy, investment and innovation
  
  Experience required
  
  
• Proven experience operating in an Engineering, AI related role - you will have managed and led small teams
  
  
• Strong software engineering background, ideally with hands-on experience in Python-based development environments
  
  
• Experience building and scaling data platforms, machine learning pipelines or AI-driven applications
  
  
• Demonstrable experience deploying AI models into production environments rather than purely experimental use cases
  
  
• Experience leading engineering teams responsible for high availability platforms, APIs and complex backend systems
  
  
• Strong understanding of cloud or hybrid infrastructure, containerisation and scalable architecture patterns
  
  
• Experience embedding data, analytics and AI into real commercial decision making (pricing, automation, optimisation, fraud detection, personalisation etc.)
  
  
• Ability to operate at both strategic and technical depth, influencing senior stakeholders while maintaining engineering credibility
  
  
• Experience leading engineering teams, and be able to effectively challenge Developers
  
  This is an opportunity to shape and scale an AI-driven engineering capability within a highly successful digital business, with real influence over technology direction and innovation.
  
  Birmingham (office based, 4 days a week onsite)