Lead Applied AI Engineer

<p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Why loveholidays?</strong></p><p style="min-height:1.5em">We’re on a mission to open the world to everyone, giving our customers unlimited choice, unmatched ease and unmissable value for their next getaway.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">Our <strong>trailblaze together</strong> culture is what drives our success, powered by our people and the way they work. Using progressive technology, we <strong>drive cutting-edge innovation</strong> and improve how our customers discover, book and experience their holidays. You’ll have the opportunity to <strong>accelerate your growth</strong> through meaningful challenges, new experiences and the freedom to shape your own path. <strong>You’ll create impact for our future</strong> by taking ownership, contributing to shared goals and helping shape what comes next, all as part of our <strong>enhanced international community</strong> of talented, collaborative and passionate teams.</p><div style="min-height:1.2em;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"> </div><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>The difference you’ll make</strong></p><p style="min-height:1.5em">You’ll lead the Applied AI team within the wider AI Centre of Excellence, setting technical direction and managing the engineers who build, administer and improve the AI-enabled systems and SaaS platforms that support our customers and colleagues. You’ll work closely with business verticals, engineering, security and senior stakeholders to turn business priorities into a clear roadmap and measurable outcomes.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">You’ll combine people management with hands-on technical leadership across applied and agentic AI workflows, SaaS services, integrations and data pipelines. You’ll guide architecture and delivery, develop the team’s capabilities and own relationships with third-party SaaS suppliers, ensuring our platforms are reliable, secure and deliver value for money.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">The team sits within Business IT &amp; AI Operations. You’ll provide the direction, governance and operational ownership that help loveholidays scale intelligent automation and well-run business systems safely and effectively, balancing new opportunities with service quality, cost and long-term maintainability.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Your day-to-day:</strong></p><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Lead and line-manage Applied AI engineers, setting clear goals, providing regular feedback and coaching, supporting career development and managing performance. Help recruit and onboard new team members as the team grows.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Set the team’s technical direction and delivery roadmap with business and technology stakeholders, prioritising work, allocating capacity and managing dependencies to deliver measurable business outcomes.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Provide hands-on technical leadership for applied and agentic AI workflows, integrations and automation pipelines, guiding architecture, reviewing designs and code, and contributing to complex or high-impact engineering work.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Set standards for building, testing and evaluating tool-using agents with Google ADK or similar frameworks, including safe tool access, human oversight and production readiness.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Own operational performance across AI-enabled services and SaaS pla