Managing Director - AI & Gen AI

Lead AI and Generative AI capability from India: set the strategy, build a scaled engineering, applied science and product organisation, and deliver safe, governed AI solutions that improve customer outcomes, colleague productivity and operational efficiency across the Group.

Key responsibilities

• Define the India AI and GenAI strategy and roadmap, aligned to Group AI priorities and use-case portfolio (customer servicing, fraud and financial crime, credit and risk, operations automation, software engineering productivity, knowledge and conversational assistants).
• Build and lead the AI engineering, applied research, ML/LLMOps, AI platform and AI product teams; set up centres of excellence.
• Own delivery of production-grade AI and GenAI solutions at scale, from experimentation through to run, with clear value measurement.
• Establish and operate Responsible AI, model risk, explainability, bias, security and data-privacy frameworks, in partnership with Risk, Compliance and Legal.
• Drive AI platform strategy: foundation model access, RAG and agentic patterns, evaluation, guardrails, observability, cost (FinOps) and cloud/hybrid architecture.
• Partner with global business and technology heads to prioritise use cases and embed AI into products and processes.
• Lead talent strategy: attract scarce AI talent, create career paths, build academic and ecosystem partnerships.
• Manage vendor, hyperscaler and partner relationships; shape build, buy and partner decisions.

Qualifications and experience

• 18+ years in technology, data or analytics, with 8+ years leading AI/ML at scale; hands-on grounding in modern ML and GenAI (LLMs, RAG, agents, fine-tuning, evaluation).
• Proven record of taking AI/GenAI solutions to production in a regulated bank or financial institution, with measurable business value.
• Experience leading large multi-disciplinary teams (data scientists, ML engineers, platform, product).
• Strong understanding of model risk management, AI governance and regulatory expectations (e.g. PRA SS1/23, EU AI Act awareness, FCA expectations).
• Advanced degree in computer science, AI, statistics or related field preferred.

Must-have: production GenAI delivery in BFSI; team of 200+ in AI/data science/ML engineering; evidence of AI governance and model-risk partnership; business-outcome ownership (revenue, cost, risk or CX).

Good-to-have: experience building an AI platform or enterprise LLM gateway; publications, patents or recognised thought leadership; experience with UK banking customers or regulators.