Lead Machine Learning Engineer

YouLend is hiring a Lead Machine Learning Engineer in London, United Kingdom. It pays £110k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on YouLend.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this machine learning engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
Tools and skills the posting cites include MLflow, Python and Airflow.
Level classifies it as a lead role.
Level lists 31 other open roles at YouLend.

AI in this role

Lead Machine Learning Engineer to build production ML systems, establish MLOps practices, and mentor a growing engineering team.

MLflowPythonAirflowEvidentlyDvcDockerKubernetesAWSGoogle CloudAzure

ml-opsmachine-learningmlopsapi-developmentmodel-deploymentteam-leadership

We’re looking for a Machine Learning Lead Engineer who wants to operate as a player-coach — someone still very hands-on, but excited to grow into a proper management role over time. This is not a pure manager role from day one. You’ll be building, shipping, and improving ML systems while gradually taking on more team leadership responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities

What you’ll do:

Build and maintain production-grade ML systems and pipelines
Stay hands-on (coding, reviews, debugging, deployments)
Mentor a small team of ML engineers (2–3 people initially)
Establish ML engineering & MLOps best practices
Improve deployment, monitoring, and model lifecycle management
Collaborate with DS, Risk, Product, and Engineering
Help shape roadmap and hiring

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

Strong background as an ML Engineer (not purely DS/research)
Experience deploying and running ML models in production
Solid software engineering skills (Python, APIs, systems)
Good understanding of MLOps stack (CI/CD, monitoring, pipelines)
Familiarity with tools like MLflow, Airflow, Evidently, DVC, Docker, Kubernetes.
Cloud experience (AWS/GCP/Azure)
Some mentoring/leadership experience + desire to grow into management
Nice to have:
- Experience scaling ML platforms or teams
- Fintech / lending / risk domain exposure

How we rate this

Lead Machine Learning Engineer at YouLend rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ 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.

Key facts

Lead Machine Learning Engineer is an open job at YouLend.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is £110k a year.
The role is based in London, Greater London.
The job was posted on October 1, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by YouLend. Apply on YouLend

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

ML OpsMachine learningMLOpsAPI DevelopmentModel DeploymentTeam LeadershipMLflowPython

Also common in machine learning engineer jobs at this level

PyTorch LLM TensorFlow Deep learning Generative AI C++

Pay

Typical machine learning engineer job: $199k

Use the typical machine learning engineer figure as a reference when pay comes up. See machine learning engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where mlops was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where api development was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where model deployment was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: ML Ops, Machine learning, MLOps, API Development, and Model Deployment. 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.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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