AI Innovation Lead (Automation Lead)

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.

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.

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.