Level

Thought Machine

Engineering Manager - AI Platform

Thought Machine is hiring an Engineering Manager - AI Platform in London, United Kingdom. Level rates it ; you can apply on Thought Machine.

Level's read on this job

  • On Level's scale, this role is Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
  • Tools and skills the posting cites include engineering management, platform engineering and AI tooling.
  • Level classifies it as a lead role.
  • Level lists 39 other open roles at Thought Machine.

AI in this role

Engineering Manager leading a team to build and scale internal AI platforms and developer tooling.

engineering-managementplatform-engineeringai-tooling

Thought Machine's mission is bold – to properly and permanently rid the world's banks of legacy technology. To achieve this, we have developed the foundations of modern banking through core and payments technology which run natively in the cloud. What we are attempting is hard and means we need great people working together to build great technology.

We have grown rapidly in the past few years – growing our team to more than 550 individuals across offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney and our newly established Engineering Hub in Lisbon. We have raised more than £500m in funding and our investors include Molten Ventures, Eurazeo, Intesa Sanpaolo, Temasek, Nyca Partners, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, Standard Chartered Ventures, and more.

We have created a culture that enables our team to produce the best work in the industry while ensuring we have fun along the way. We're regularly cited as having a fantastic workplace culture and have been recognised by Sifted magazine as having one of the highest Glassdoor ratings for a UK fintech company and the industry's most generous employee share package. Named one of the world's most innovative fintechs by Global Finance Magazine, we were also recognised by the Financial Times as one of Europe's fastest-growing companies for two consecutive years—and a UK Best Employer for 2026.

Engineering Managers at Thought Machine lead complex technical projects to deliver on our roadmap. To accomplish this you will manage a group of talented engineers as they identify issues and implement creative solutions to address them. You will manage your own project deliverables, contribute to the vision and strategy of your area and help develop and grow your team. We are particularly excited to hear from people who show strong product ownership and enjoy switching between engineering management and being hands-on with technical work.

Your team’s primary mission is to enable everyone in Thought Machine to productively, safely, and easily solve their business problems with AI tooling. You will have a wide remit to design and implement new platforms, adjust pipelines, and introduce new tools when they are the right choice for the job. You will work closely with your team, senior leadership and internal users to define and execute your roadmap.

Duties

  • Actively participating in technical discussions and design reviews.

  • Taking a data driven approach and measuring your team’s impact with the data you can collect directly from your users.

  • Understanding the needs, challenges and impediments of internal teams so you can identify solutions and measure success

  • Contributing to the vision and strategy of your platform area, aligning it with broader engineering and business goals.

  • Contributing to engineering-wide initiatives as part of the engineering management team on anything from recruitment to team processes.

  • Develop engineers in your team and help them in their career development.

  • Leading by example: Code reviews and hands on technical work

  • Championing industry best practices and emerging trends to keep our team ahead of the curve.

Essential

  • 2+ years experience of engineering management in platform teams that include AI tooling and capabilities

  • Experience of working in a cloud-native environment, using modern technology stacks similar to the stack we use at Thought Machine (Kubernetes, AWS/GCP/Azure, golang/python).

  • Technical background to drive technical decisions and great interpersonal skills to drive communication with your users. You should enjoy working in environments where you have a high level of responsibility and autonomy.

  • You are comfortable wearing different Engineering Manager hats that suit the changing needs of a team as it evolves.

  • You have experience developing platforms and tools that are used by other engineers either internally or externally.

Desirable

  • Previously led an AI-first team driving organisational change

  • Experience working in or managing internal platform teams

  • Previously helped recruit and shape brilliant engineering teams.

  • Taken an active role in defining and evaluating effective team processes.

  • Previously worked in a hyper-growth environment.

Benefits

  • Highly competitive salary

  • Pension plan (match up to 5%)

  • Life insurance - three times annual salary

  • Competitive maternity (six months fully paid) and paternity leave (four weeks fully paid)

  • Shared parental leave (matched to our maternity leave for the same point in time)

  • 25 days holiday and bank holidays

  • Flexible working hours

  • Cycle-to-work scheme

  • Electric car scheme

  • Season ticket loan

  • Access to outstanding learning materials and courses

  • Sports and hobby clubs, subsidised by Thought Machine

  • All the latest tech you need

  • Start the day properly with fresh fruit and cereals

  • Huge range of healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks, smoothies and drinks

  • A talented and experienced team as your colleagues

  • An environment where we encourage learning and progress

  • Two charity days a year

  • Weekly food pop-up

We actively hire candidates who demonstrate technical excellence in their field and welcome people of all ages and backgrounds, providing everyone with equal access to professional development. You are encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't accurately match the job description. We also encourage applications from those with different abilities, including candidates with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia.

How we rate this

Engineering Manager - AI Platform at Thought Machine rates 70 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Engineering ManagementPlatform EngineeringAI Tooling

Questions you could be asked

  1. Tell me about a project where engineering management was part of your work. What did you do?
  2. Tell me about a project where platform engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
  3. Tell me about a project where ai tooling was part of your work. What did you do?
  4. Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
  5. If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: Engineering Management, Platform Engineering, and AI Tooling. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
  • Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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