Lead Cloud & AI Platform Engineer

CreateFuture

Working at CreateFuture CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference  while always putting people first. We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years. Our UK Benefits  * 35 days leave (including bank holidays).  * Private medical insurance. * Enhanced parental and adoption leave.  * Financial coaching + 5% pension match. * 40 hours of paid learning and development.  View our full list of UK benefits.  CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row. Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today.   About the role and team: A hands-on Lead engineer embedded in the client's platform team, responsible for the reliability, scalability, and evolution of their Kubernetes-based infrastructure on AWS. This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering and DevOps, owning the day-to-day health of containerised workloads while driving improvements to delivery pipelines, GitOps practices, and managed service configuration. The right candidate is comfortable working autonomously in a mature, opinionated stack and can influence without authority across engineering teams. This role combines deep hands-on expertise with team leadership, stakeholder engagement, and delivery planning. The right candidate can operate credibly at an engineering level while also communicating clearly with business and technical stakeholders, translating platform priorities into a coherent roadmap and ensuring the team has the clarity and support needed to deliver effectively. What you'll be doing: * Own the platform engineering roadmap, working with business and technical stakeholders to prioritise initiatives, surface risks, and align delivery against wider programme goals * Lead and mentor a team of platform engineers, providing technical guidance, supporting growth, and maintaining quality and consistency across the team's output * Act as the primary technical point of contact for platform-related matters across engineering, product, and operations teams * Support on call for the EKS platform. * Own the operational health and evolution of containerised workloads running on EKS, including Helm chart management and Kustomize-based environment configuration * Drive GitOps practices using Flux, maintaining, improving, and troubleshooting the reconciliation pipeline across environments * Manage and optimise core managed services: EKS, MSK, and RDS, including scaling, patching, cost governance, and incident response * Maintain and extend infrastructure-as-code using Terraform, ensuring consistency, modularity, and alignment with AWS best practices * Support and improve GitHub Actions CI/CD workflows, including build, test, and deployment pipelines for containerised applications * Collaborate with development teams to support the hosting, debugging, and performance of Java/Kotlin and Python-based services * Identify and address platform-level technical debt, contributing to a roadmap of incremental improvements * Support on call for the EKS platform. What you bring: * Kubernetes at production scale, EKS preferred, with strong understanding of networking, RBAC, resource management, and cluster operations * GitOps tooling, Flux (essential), with solid working knowledge of Helm and Kustomize * AWS managed services, hands-on experience with EKS, MSK, and RDS in production environments * Terraform, authoring and maintaining modular infrastructure-as-code across multiple environments * GitHub Actions, building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for containerised workloads * Application-layer awareness, ability to support and troubleshoot Java/Kotlin and/or Python services running in containers * Strong operational mindset, with experience owning incident management, on-call frameworks, and post-incident review processes * Proven experience leading a platform or infrastructure engineering team, including mentoring, performance support, and day-to-day team management * Strong stakeholder management skills, able to engage confidently with technical and non-technical audiences, translate complexity into clear priorities, and manage competing demands WHAT WE’LL OFFER YOU: We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed. We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look. OUR HIRING PROCESS We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process. It usually looks like this: * Call with our Talent Acquisition Team  * Role specific capability interview  Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens. INCLUSION AT CREATEFUTURE  We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work. If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help. We look forward to your application!

Baringa

ABOUT BARINGA  Baringa is a global consulting firm that partners with leaders to drive change and create value. With deep industry expertise, and enabled by advanced technology, the firm helps clients to deliver with greater confidence and certainty. With over 2,000 people across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, the firm combines global insight with local understanding. The firm works across energy and resources, financial services, government and public sector, consumer products and retail, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, manufacturing, and technology, media and telecoms, with capabilities spanning strategy, transformation and operational excellence – all powered by advanced technology, data, AI and digital innovation. Clients value Baringa’s collaborative approach and the way its teams integrate seamlessly – all working with a shared understanding of what matters most. The firm is known for its kind, curious experts who listen closely and care deeply about client success as they help clients transform energy markets, modernise financial platforms, expand telecoms and digital networks through advanced data analytics, enable digital services in government, and unlock growth in consumer sectors. Certified as a Great Place to Work around the world, Baringa has been recognised by the Financial Times in 22 categories of its UK Leading Management Consultants rankings, and by Forbes for four consecutive years as one of the World’s Best Management Consulting Firms.   Our Solutions & AI Labs (SAIL) practice are looking for experienced Consultants to join the team! The Forward Deployed AI & Solutions Engineer role will lead the delivery of AI-enabled solutions embedded in our clients' teams, combining deep technical specialism with the commercial and leadership skills to grow and shape our practice.  This is a role for someone who thrives at the intersection of client advisory, technical architecture and hands-on delivery leadership – and who has a genuine passion for bringing AI solutions to production at scale.   Our Solutions & AI Labs (SAIL) practice focuses on helping clients control their data, turn it into actionable insights, and better leverage it through the use of AI and Machine Learning solutions directly embedded into business processes. We support clients across a number of industries and offer deep expertise in AI/ML, Cloud, Platform Engineering, and Managed Solutions.   What you will be doing  As a Senior Consultant in SAIL, you will own and lead consultancy engagements end-to-end from shaping the opportunity and winning the work, through to delivery governance and team leadership. You will bring SME-level depth in at least one of AI/ML Engineering, Platform Engineering, or Software Engineering, and apply it to create real, lasting value for our clients.   Although we do not expect you to be an expert in all of the below activities simultaneously, our team consists of people who can work as advisors to our clients as well as bringing deep technical knowledge when needed. The profile of our typical engagements reflects that.   AI/ML Specialism  You will bring expert-level knowledge in at least one of the following domains, and working knowledge across the others:   Agentic AI & LLM Engineering:  * Design and build production-grade agentic systems using major LLM SDKs and agent frameworks; deep knowledge of RAG, MCP servers and prompt engineering at scale.  * Strong opinions on secure, resilient enterprise deployment of LLM-powered systems; current knowledge of the latest model capabilities and AI product stacks.   Machine Learning Engineering:  * End-to-end ML lifecycle expertise: feature engineering, model training, evaluation and production deployment, including MLOps, monitoring and drift detection.  * Practical knowledge of ML frameworks (e.g. scikit-learn, PyTorch, XGBoost) and cloud-native ML services (SageMaker, Azure ML, Vertex AI).  Platform & Cloud Engineering:  * Architecture and delivery of scalable cloud data and AI platforms on AWS, Azure or GCP; experienced with containerisation, IaC, event-driven architectures and CI/CD.  * Track record of delivering production Python services and APIs; working knowledge of cloud-native application patterns and release practices.   Software Engineering:  * Production-grade Python services (FastAPI, AWS Lambda, event-driven patterns) and front-end development with React/Next.js, Material UI and SWR.  * Cloud architecture design capability across major providers; rounded understanding of database trade-offs – relational, NoSQL, graph and caching strategies.  * Strong engineering practices: CI/CD, testing (Jest, Cypress, React Test Library), release management and security-conscious development.   * A genuine passion for AI solutions and specifically for the complexity of delivering them to production at scale. You should be as energised by the hard problems of operationalisation, reliability and governance as by the technology itself.   Your Skills and Experience   We're seeking a technically credible, commercially aware consultant who brings a rare combination of delivery accountability, client advisory skill, and deep AI/technology specialism. You will be someone energised by the complexity of taking AI solutions to production at scale – and who can inspire a team and a client with that same passion.  * 1-5 years in technology consulting, software engineering or AI/ML   * SME-level depth in at least one of: Agentic AI/LLM Engineering, Machine Learning Engineering, Platform & Cloud Engineering, or Software Engineering – with strong architecture and design capability across cloud, data and AI domains.   * Clear, confident communicator – able to make the complex accessible for technical and non-technical audiences alike, and to represent Baringa’s expertise with credibility.  * Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science or related discipline, or equivalent depth through relevant professional certifications (e.g. AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Google Professional ML Engineer).  * Prior experience as a forward-deployed or embedded engineer within a client environment; exposure to regulated industries such as energy, financial services or public sector.  If you are excited by the opportunity to lead meaningful AI and technology engagements for major clients and thrive in a collaborative, people-first culture that values both technical rigour and human connection we would love to hear from you.  JOIN US All applications received will be reviewed by a member of our Talent Acquisition team. We never rely solely on automated screening or AI tools to make hiring decisions. Your application will be considered for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, nationality, disability, age, faith or social background. We do not filter applications by university background and encourage those who have taken alternative educational and career paths to apply. We would like to actively encourage applications from those who identify with less represented and minority groups. We operate an inclusive recruitment process, ensuring reasonable adjustments where needed. Please contact a member of our Recruitment Team to discuss further.   BARINGA PRIVACY NOTICES For UK & EU Your personal data will be retained by Baringa for up to two years, in accordance with our UK Recruitment Privacy Notice / EU Recruitment Privacy Notice, to evaluate your application and meet our legal and reporting obligations. In line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to request access to, rectification, or erasure (subject to legal limitations) of your personal data. For more information, please contact us at privacy@baringa.com For the USA Your personal data may be retained by Baringa for up to two years, as outlined in our Recruitment Privacy Notice (AMER & APAC), to support the recruitment process and internal reporting requirements. Where applicable, and in accordance with relevant federal and state laws, you may have the right to request access to or correction of your personal information. For further details, please contact privacy@baringa.com For Australia & Singapore Your personal data will be retained by Baringa for up to two years, in accordance with our Recruitment Privacy Notice (AMER & APAC), to assess your application and meet applicable reporting and legal obligations. In line with the Australian Privacy Act and Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), you may have rights to access, correct, or request limited deletion of your personal data. For more information, please contact us at privacy@baringa.com

Baringa

ABOUT BARINGA  Baringa is a global consulting firm that partners with leaders to drive change and create value. With deep industry expertise, and enabled by advanced technology, the firm helps clients to deliver with greater confidence and certainty. With over 2,000 people across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, the firm combines global insight with local understanding. The firm works across energy and resources, financial services, government and public sector, consumer products and retail, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, manufacturing, and technology, media and telecoms, with capabilities spanning strategy, transformation and operational excellence – all powered by advanced technology, data, AI and digital innovation. Clients value Baringa’s collaborative approach and the way its teams integrate seamlessly – all working with a shared understanding of what matters most. The firm is known for its kind, curious experts who listen closely and care deeply about client success as they help clients transform energy markets, modernise financial platforms, expand telecoms and digital networks through advanced data analytics, enable digital services in government, and unlock growth in consumer sectors. Certified as a Great Place to Work around the world, Baringa has been recognised by the Financial Times in 22 categories of its UK Leading Management Consultants rankings, and by Forbes for four consecutive years as one of the World’s Best Management Consulting Firms.   Our Solutions & AI Labs (SAIL) practice is looking for an experienced Senior Manager to lead consultancy engagements and grow our AI & Solutions Engineering capability. The Forward Deployed AI & Solutions Engineer role will lead the delivery of AI-enabled solutions embedded in our clients' teams, combining deep technical specialism with the commercial and leadership skills to grow and shape our practice.  This is a role for someone who thrives at the intersection of client advisory, technical architecture and hands-on delivery leadership – and who has a genuine passion for bringing AI solutions to production at scale.   Our Solutions & AI Labs (SAIL) practice focuses on helping clients control their data, turn it into actionable insights, and better leverage it through the use of AI and Machine Learning solutions directly embedded into business processes. We support clients across a number of industries and offer deep expertise in AI/ML, Cloud, Platform Engineering, and Managed Solutions.   What you will be doing  As a Senior Manager in SAIL, you will own and lead consultancy engagements end-to-end from shaping the opportunity and winning the work, through to delivery governance and team leadership. You will bring SME-level depth in at least one of AI/ML Engineering, Platform Engineering, or Software Engineering, and apply it to create real, lasting value for our clients.   Although we do not expect you to be an expert in all of the below activities simultaneously, our team consists of people who can work as advisors to our clients as well as bringing deep technical knowledge when needed. The profile of our typical engagements reflects that.   Key responsibilities span the following areas.   Engagement Leadership:  * Own and lead end-to-end delivery of complex AI and technology consulting engagements, taking accountability for scope, quality, risk and client outcomes.  * Lead and resource multi-disciplinary delivery teams including engineers, data scientists and consultants providing clear direction, technical oversight and people development.  * Manage engagement resourcing: forecast team requirements, work with practice leadership to staff engagements, and develop the talent pipeline through mentoring and support of junior practitioners.  * Proactively identify and manage delivery risks in complex stakeholder environments, escalating appropriately and maintaining client confidence throughout.  * Communicate clearly to both technical teams and senior client stakeholders, translating complexity into actionable insight and decisive recommendation.  * Conduct rigorous technical reviews and uphold engineering and delivery standards across every engagement you lead.   Business Development & Bid Support:  * Play a leading role in business development: identifying new opportunities, shaping propositions, and supporting or leading bids and tender responses for AI and technology engagements.  * Contribute to proposal writing, articulating Baringa’s capabilities and differentiators, including authoring technical and delivery sections of bid responses to client tenders and RFPs.  * Build and maintain strong client relationships, acting as a trusted advisor and developing opportunities for follow-on engagement.  * Support practice-level growth initiatives, including account planning, capability development, and go-to-market positioning for AI and solutions engineering services.   Technical Architecture & Delivery:  * Lead architecture design for AI-enabled platforms and cloud solutions, balancing technical excellence with delivery pragmatism and commercial realities.  * Provide hands-on technical direction where required – reviewing designs, code and delivery artefacts to maintain quality standards across the engagement.  * Champion the path from prototype to production: driving robust, scalable and secure AI deployments that go beyond proof-of-concept thinking to real business impact at scale.  * Act as a credible technical voice with client architects, CTOs and engineering leads, earning trust through depth of knowledge and a demonstrable delivery track record.  AI/ML Specialism  You will bring expert-level knowledge in at least one of the following domains, and working knowledge across the others:   Agentic AI & LLM Engineering:  * Design and build production-grade agentic systems using major LLM SDKs and agent frameworks; deep knowledge of RAG, MCP servers and prompt engineering at scale.  * Strong opinions on secure, resilient enterprise deployment of LLM-powered systems; current knowledge of the latest model capabilities and AI product stacks.   Machine Learning Engineering:  * End-to-end ML lifecycle expertise: feature engineering, model training, evaluation and production deployment, including MLOps, monitoring and drift detection.  * Practical knowledge of ML frameworks (e.g. scikit-learn, PyTorch, XGBoost) and cloud-native ML services (SageMaker, Azure ML, Vertex AI).  Platform & Cloud Engineering:  * Architecture and delivery of scalable cloud data and AI platforms on AWS, Azure or GCP; experienced with containerisation, IaC, event-driven architectures and CI/CD.  * Track record of delivering production Python services and APIs; working knowledge of cloud-native application patterns and release practices.   Software Engineering:  * Production-grade Python services (FastAPI, AWS Lambda, event-driven patterns) and front-end development with React/Next.js, Material UI and SWR.  * Cloud architecture design capability across major providers; rounded understanding of database trade-offs – relational, NoSQL, graph and caching strategies.  * Strong engineering practices: CI/CD, testing (Jest, Cypress, React Test Library), release management and security-conscious development.   * A genuine passion for AI solutions and specifically for the complexity of delivering them to production at scale. You should be as energised by the hard problems of operationalisation, reliability and governance as by the technology itself.   Your Skills and Experience   We're seeking a technically credible, commercially aware leader who brings a rare combination of delivery accountability, client advisory skill, and deep AI/technology specialism. You will be someone energised by the complexity of taking AI solutions to production at scale – and who can inspire a team and a client with that same passion.  * 7+ years in technology consulting, software engineering or AI/ML, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role – including direct accountability for end-to-end engagement delivery, resourcing and commercial outcomes.  * Experience supporting or leading bid and proposal activity, including writing technical and delivery sections of responses to client tenders and RFPs.  * SME-level depth in at least one of: Agentic AI/LLM Engineering, Machine Learning Engineering, Platform & Cloud Engineering, or Software Engineering – with strong architecture and design capability across cloud, data and AI domains.  * Proven ability to build and lead high-performing delivery teams in complex stakeholder environments, with experience engaging comfortably at CTO or engineering director level.  * Clear, confident communicator – able to make the complex accessible for technical and non-technical audiences alike, and to represent Baringa’s expertise with credibility.  * Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science or related discipline, or equivalent depth through relevant professional certifications (e.g. AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Google Professional ML Engineer).  * Desirable: prior experience as a forward-deployed or embedded engineer within a client environment; exposure to regulated industries such as energy, financial services or public sector.  If you are excited by the opportunity to lead meaningful AI and technology engagements for major clients and thrive in a collaborative, people-first culture that values both technical rigour and human connection we would love to hear from you.  JOIN US All applications received will be reviewed by a member of our Talent Acquisition team. We never rely solely on automated screening or AI tools to make hiring decisions. Your application will be considered for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, nationality, disability, age, faith or social background. We do not filter applications by university background and encourage those who have taken alternative educational and career paths to apply. We would like to actively encourage applications from those who identify with less represented and minority groups. We operate an inclusive recruitment process, ensuring reasonable adjustments where needed. Please contact a member of our Recruitment Team to discuss further.   BARINGA PRIVACY NOTICES For UK & EU Your personal data will be retained by Baringa for up to two years, in accordance with our UK Recruitment Privacy Notice / EU Recruitment Privacy Notice, to evaluate your application and meet our legal and reporting obligations. In line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to request access to, rectification, or erasure (subject to legal limitations) of your personal data. For more information, please contact us at privacy@baringa.com For the USA Your personal data may be retained by Baringa for up to two years, as outlined in our Recruitment Privacy Notice (AMER & APAC), to support the recruitment process and internal reporting requirements. Where applicable, and in accordance with relevant federal and state laws, you may have the right to request access to or correction of your personal information. For further details, please contact privacy@baringa.com For Australia & Singapore Your personal data will be retained by Baringa for up to two years, in accordance with our Recruitment Privacy Notice (AMER & APAC), to assess your application and meet applicable reporting and legal obligations. In line with the Australian Privacy Act and Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), you may have rights to access, correct, or request limited deletion of your personal data. For more information, please contact us at privacy@baringa.com