HEAD OF DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE (DATA & AI)
London, UK (Hybrid, 2-3 days office based)
FTSE 100
Comp: £130K + Bonus
This is a rare opportunity to take ownership of developer experience strategy and delivery for the Data & AI platform of one of the most recognised brands on the planet, a FTSE 100 organisation with genuinely large-scale, complex, legacy engineering challenges to solve.
This is a hands-on, technical leadership role, not a strategy-deck position. You will lead the design, delivery, and continuous improvement of the tooling, frameworks, and reusable components that let engineering, data, and product teams build and run Data & AI solutions faster and more effectively. Those teams are your customers.
Role Purpose
To lead the developer experience strategy and delivery, enabling teams to efficiently build and run data and AI products through scalable tooling, frameworks, and reusable components.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and deliver the developer experience strategy across the Data & AI platform, aligned to wider platform and engineering goals
- Lead the design, development, and lifecycle performance of tooling, frameworks, and reusable components for building and operating data and AI products
- Promote consistency, quality, and speed in development by embedding best practices, coding standards, and automation into the platform experience
- Drive tool agnosticism and flexibility, enabling developers to use the most effective technologies without unnecessary constraints
- Integrate emerging technologies, including large language models, to enhance developer productivity and reduce time to delivery
- Partner with infrastructure, consumer platform, and engineering teams to ensure cohesive platform capabilities and a seamless development experience
- Champion a product-led mindset and measurable outcomes across developer enablement initiatives
- Lead a high-performing team and collaborate with third-party suppliers to scale delivery and innovation in developer tooling
What will you deliver?
- A developer experience strategy that is delivered to plan and adopted across key data and AI product teams
- Demonstrable improvement in developer satisfaction and confidence in platform tooling, frameworks, and workflows
- Developer tooling and reusable assets with increased usage, reliability, and contribution to delivery speed and consistency
- Successful integration of emerging technologies (LLMs, automation) to enhance development efficiency
- Reduced duplication of effort and increased adoption of standardised, reusable components across teams
Line Management & Budget Responsibility
You will lead a team of engineers directly, alongside management of third-party suppliers and delivery partners, to scale delivery and innovation in developer tooling.
Knowledge, Skills & Experience Required
- Extensive, hands-on experience leading developer enablement, tooling, or platform engineering within a data or AI context, not just overseeing it
- Proven, end-to-end experience across the full remit, from DevEx strategy through to platform delivery, with evidence of the impact you have driven (faster time to shipped product, improved adoption, reduced duplication of effort)
- Strong understanding of modern development practices, DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-based engineering environments
- Hands-on experience with cloud and data platform technologies such as Snowflake and AWS is highly desirable
- Experience integrating emerging technologies such as LLMs to enhance software development and delivery
- Experience managing high-performing technical teams and external delivery partners
- Confident communicating technical strategies and outcomes to both technical and non-technical audiences
Qualifications required
- Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; postgraduate qualification desirable
Internal / External Relationships
You will work closely with data leadership, engineering and product teams, platform and infrastructure leads, data governance and security teams, and third-party vendors and partners to shape tools, templates, and workflows that meet developer needs across the organisation.
