About this role
Summary: The AI Lead Engineer serves as the technical authority for agentic AI platform architecture, designing and building scalable, secure, and reliable AI infrastructure. This role involves leading engineering strategy, mentoring team members, and ensuring technical excellence across the squad while collaborating with pr...
About us
We’re the team behind digital retailer [Very](http://www.very.co.uk/).
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 you’re high-performing, ambitious and make the most of every opportunity, we want to hear from you. In return, you’ll 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, you’ll 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.
We're building the AI infrastructure that will underpin Very's next generation of intelligent products and experiences. This is a greenfield space, which means real influence: you'll 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.
You'll 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, you'll shape both what we build and how we build it.
You'll have the opportunity to tackle challenges that simply don't exist in smaller organisations. From designing AI gateways and LLM integrations to building the cloud-native platform foundations they run on, you'll 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. You'll remain hands-on with the code while defining engineering strategy, championing best practices and driving technical excellence across the squad.
You'll 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 don't 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 platform's architecture
- Sharing your expertise internally and externally, helping to build Very's engineering brand and reputation
About you
You'll be an experienced cloud platform engineer with deep, hands-on expertise in AWS and Infrastructure as Code — and you'll have taken that expertise into the world of AI.
You'll bring serious technical depth alongside the ability to influence, mentor and inspire. You're passionate about engineering excellence and you care about the people around you as much as the technology itself.
We're 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, you'll 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](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/The-Very-Group-Reviews-E8682.htm)
- £6500 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
- 30 days holiday + bank holidays
- LinkedIn Learning access
- Bonus potential (performance and business-related)
- Up to 25% discount on Very.co.uk
- Matched pension up to 6%
- More benefits can be found [on our career site](https://theverygroup.jobs/life-at-tvg/benefits)
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 you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like we’re a good match, we’ll 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 you'd like to know more about our interviews, you can find out [here](https://theverygroup.jobs/preparing-for-interview/our-recruitment-process).
Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities
We’re [building a culture of everyday inclusion](https://theverygroup.jobs/diversity-and-inclusion), and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We don’t 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 talentacquisition@theverygroup.com. We’ll be happy to support you.
We’re proud to be a [Disability Confident Committed Employer](https://www.theverygroup.com/media/news/2024/very-becomes-disability-confident-employer-and-launches-new-colleague-network/) and 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.