Lead Engineer - AI Agents

Lead Engineer - AI Agents LocationLondon; Belfast; Birmingham; Bristol; Cambridge; Dublin; Edinburgh; Leeds; Lisbon; Madrid; Manchester; NewcastleEmployment TypeFull timeLocation TypeRemoteDepartmentFintechTechnologyIT OperationsWe're hiring our first Lead Engineer - AI Agents to lead a team that designs, ships, and scales automations and AI agents across M-KOPA. This is a brand-new team within the business - the tech foundation is already proven, and now we need someone to lead it, scale it, and define what it becomes.The Impact Your production-grade automations and agents will directly improve how 2,300+ employees work across our global operations. We've already helped over 10 million customers access over $2 billion in credit - and the tools you build will help that mission scale further and faster. It's your chance to be part of something that's literally transforming lives across an entire continent 🌍The Opportunity🎯 Mission-driven engineering: Every automation you build helps internal teams and customer-facing staff deliver financial inclusion to Africa's Every Day Earners🏆 Global recognition: Join a company named by TIME 100 as one of the world's most influential and by the Financial Times as Africa's fastest-growing for 5 consecutive years (2022–2026)🚀 Scale challenges: 2,500+ employees across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, the UK, and Europe - internal teams that can't scale by hiring forever need intelligent tooling that actually works🌱 Environmental impact: We're carbon-negative, having displaced over 2 million tonnes of emissionsWhat You'll DoAt M-KOPA, you'll lead the AI Ops Agents team from day one - owning delivery, growing the function, and proving the value. You'll work daily with Claude, Claude Code, MCP, and LangChain to build production-grade agents and automations that internal teams actually use. Your team builds automations and agents for internal use and serves as internal consultants, helping Software Engineering teams integrate AI into customer-facing products.Your key responsibilities:Lead three AI Ops Engineers — own their delivery, development, and day-to-day workPrioritise efficiently — manage competing requests from multiple teams by applying a clear prioritisation framework you'll help develop and improveDesign and ship multi-agent systems and production-grade automations that measurably improve how internal teams and customer-facing staff workBuild RAG pipelines for internal knowledge retrieval that ground agents in real organisational contextKeep the AI tooling stack healthy as usage scales across 2,500+ employeesStay current on emerging AI tools and technologies - know what's hype and what's actually usefulHelp refine AI training for the wider organisation, including Software Engineering teamsTechnical Environment 💻AI & Agentic Frameworks: Claude, Claude Code, Anthropic tooling, LangChain, LangGraph, MCP, multi-agent orchestration, Google ADK (or similar agentic tooling)Automation & Prototyping: Scripting, workflow tools, AI-assisted development, rapid prototyping (Vercel/Railway)Enterprise Tooling: Identity automation (Entra), internal platforms, Notion, HiBob integrationsExisting Foundation: Twelve months of Claude, Claude Code, Notion, HiBob, and Entra automations already running in production — you're building on proven foundations, not starting from zeroOur ApproachBuild, don't just advise — this is a hands-on team that ships working automations and agentsProve the value, then expand — start with three engineers, demonstrate impact, grow from thereProduct-focused mindset — treat internal teams as customers and build tooling that worksCut through the hype — evaluate emerging AI tools on practical value, not marketing buzzWhat You NeedWe're looking for someone with a strong technical background and product-focused mindset. You won't be building models - we have Data Science teams for that. You'll be building multi-agent systems, shipping production-grade automations,...