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AI Innovation Lead (Automation Lead)
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AI Innovation Lead (Automation Lead)
6-MONTH CONTRACT | LONDON, HYBRID
Lead a two-person innovation team inside a large, global financial technology business, sourcing and framing AI and automation opportunities across the enterprise, then building working prototypes alongside a Specialist to prove them out fast. You own the pipeline, the commercial case for every pilot, and the call on what gets scaled or killed. High autonomy, light-touch direction, direct line to a Director.
What you'll do
- Build and manage a pipeline of AI and automation opportunities sourced directly from business and operations teams.
- Frame every pilot commercially before build starts, quantifying value (revenue, cost, risk, speed) and defining success criteria and stop conditions.
- Build hands-on alongside a Specialist across the existing technology stack, including Microsoft, AWS, Salesforce and Snowflake.
- Run structured pilots with real users, setting up measurement (baseline, result, delta) and reporting outcomes accurately and transparently.
- Iterate quickly on feedback and flag early when something isn't working.
- Manage relationships with business leads and bring partner functions in early so pilots don't stall at governance gates.
- Own the team's tool and tech radar, testing new AI and automation tools against real use cases and sharing findings, tools tested, capability, cost, security posture, integration effort.
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What you'll bring
- Demonstrated experience building AI-enabled solutions, prototypes, agents or automations, hands-on, not just AI-aware.
- Strong understanding of LLM strengths, limitations and risks.
- Strong commercial acumen, able to size an opportunity, build a benefits case and defend the numbers to senior stakeholders.
- Comfortable working directly with business teams, this is a business-facing role, not back-office engineering.
- Consulting toolkit: structured problem solving, storytelling and crisp executive communication.
- Sound judgement balancing value, risk, complexity and speed, and the discipline to conclude underperforming pilots early with clear rationale.
- Independent, resourceful and comfortable with limited direction in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
- Background in a consulting firm or technology company preferred.
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Nice to have
- Salesforce ecosystem, AI agent frameworks, AI coding tools, data platforms or the AWS ecosystem.
- ML fundamentals, understands features in, predictions out, and can support model-adjacent pilots such as churn.
- Payments, fintech or financial services background.
- Experience training or supporting non-technical users on new tools.
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