AI & Automation Lead

Sword is a leading provider of business technology solutions within the Energy, Public and Finance Sectors, driving transformational change within our clients.  We use proven technology, specialist teams and domain expertise to build solid technical foundations across platforms, data, and business applications.  We have a passion for using technology to solve business problems, working in partnership with our clients to help in achieving their goals. 

This is a pivotal leadership role at a time of significant evolution for Sword. As the organisation continues its journey to evolve and strengthen its Data, Analytics, AI & automation offerings, this role will play a critical part in shaping how we position, sell, and scale our AI & Data transformation services.

The AI and Automation Lead will be instrumental in leading a team of specialists across automation and AI delivery. You will play a major role in shaping our automation capability, standards, and technical strategy.

This is an exciting opportunity for a senior AI and automation professional to take a pivotal leadership role within our growing Data Analytics, AI & automation function, supporting strategic customers on their transformation journeys.

We are seeking a highly motivated, growth‑oriented individual who wants to be part of an exciting and forward‑looking journey. The successful candidate will thrive in an environment of change, be energised by building and expanding customer relationships, and be passionate about helping organisations realise value through data‑led and AI‑enabled transformation.

About the role:

As the AI and Automation Lead you will play a major role in shaping our automation and AI delivery capability, standards, and technical strategy. You will lead a team of automation and AI specialists, provide hands‑on coaching, and deliver technical assurance across multiple client engagements to ensure high-quality, secure, and scalable automation solutions and AI-enabled products. You will also be instrumental in helping to build and secure future work for our teams; preparing statements of work and engaging with clients alongside our sales team.

The role offers the chance to work with the very latest Microsoft technologies, such as Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps, Dataverse), Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, and the Azure AI ecosystem, while influencing solution design, architectural decisions, and delivery excellence. You will work closely with clients across a range of industries, supporting discovery, design, and delivery, and you will also contribute to pre‑sales activity by joining client calls, shaping proposals, and advising on solution approaches.

This role provides the perfect blend of leadership, technical depth, innovation, and client interaction, offering substantial scope to make a lasting impact on both our clients and the direction of our digital transformation service offerings.

Areas of Accountability, Responsibility and Competence Level:

• Lead, mentor, and develop automation engineers and AI specialists, promoting best practices and high-quality delivery

• Provide technical direction, guidance, and oversight across automation and AI delivery engagements
• Deliver technical assurance by reviewing solution designs, architectures, implementation approaches, and operational readiness
• Oversee the design and delivery of scalable automation solutions and AI-enabled applications using Microsoft cloud technologies
• Ensure teams follow best-practice patterns for workflow automation, integrations, low-code governance, testing, and optimisation
• Support the Leadership Team in shaping the AI and automation strategy, standards, and capability roadmap
• Act as a senior technical advisor to clients, translating business requirements into automation roadmaps and AI-enabled solutions
• Facilitate discovery sessions, workshops, and solution design reviews with client stakeholders (process discovery, value cases, and feasibility)
• Support the sales team by joining client calls, providing technical expertise, and contributing to solution shaping
• Participate in scoping, estimation, and the creation of technical content for proposals and bids (including automation and AI delivery approaches)
• Ensure all solutions meet governance, security, compliance, and responsible AI standards
• Promote strong engineering fundamentals including code quality, testing, automation, documentation, and CI/CD across low-code and pro-code components
• Identify delivery risks (security, data exposure, change management, adoption), propose mitigation strategies, and ensure predictable, high-quality outcomes
• Collaborate with Data Architects, Data Engineers, AI Specialists, and other cross-functional teams to design cohesive end-to-end solutions
• Keep the team aligned with emerging technologies and patterns across Power Platform, Copilot Studio, Azure AI, and agentic AI approaches
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency through automation accelerators, reusable components, prompt/agent patterns, and reference architectures
• Contribute hands-on technical expertise when required to unblock teams or solve complex automation or AI engineering challenges
• Engage in continuous improvement initiatives to advance automation maturity, delivery quality, and standardisation across the practice

• Strong people skills; able to engage clients around understanding their problems and solution-forming, as well as being able to inspire and motivate your teams
• Experience working with stakeholders to propose appropriate automation and AI solutions across a broad range of technical and operational challenges
• Deep expertise in Microsoft Power Platform, including Power Automate (cloud flows, approvals, desktop flows/RPA), Power Apps, Dataverse, and environment/security administration
• Strong hands‑on experience designing and delivering end-to-end automation solutions (process discovery through build, release, monitoring, and continuous improvement)
• Experience with Copilot Studio, including building copilots, connecting to enterprise data and APIs, using orchestration, and managing topics/actions securely
• Strong understanding of LLM capabilities and limitations, prompt design, evaluation, and common patterns for enterprise use cases (including retrieval-augmented generation)
• Experience with Azure AI Foundry concepts and tooling, including AI application development workflows, model selection/evaluation, safety controls, and enterprise integration
• Experience designing and implementing agentic solutions (e.g., task-oriented agents, data agents) and integrating them with business processes and automation
• Ability to design secure integrations using APIs/connectors across Microsoft 365, Azure services, line-of-business systems, and data platforms
• Strong understanding of governance across automation and AI, including environment strategy, DLP policies, access controls, auditability, and change management
• Ability to embed governance frameworks across delivery teams using repeatable standards, templates, and automated controls
• Experience designing secure and compliant solutions aligned to enterprise standards and regulatory requirements, including responsible AI considerations
• Working knowledge of data and analytics concepts (data modelling fundamentals, semantic layers, and data quality) to enable automation and AI use cases
• Expertise in CI/CD and ALM practices for Power Platform and AI solutions (source control, pipelines, code reviews, testing, and release management)
• Ability to lead technical assurance across architectures, integrations, automation workflows, and AI solution components
• Hands‑on expertise implementing integrations and orchestration patterns, including event-driven approaches and human-in-the-loop workflows where appropriate
• Experience with predictive analytics and/or applied machine learning, including framing use cases, collaborating on feature/data needs, and deploying models into workflows
• Understanding of how AI Foundry and Copilot Studio solutions can extend the automation ecosystem through copilots, agents, and custom workflows
• Strong capability in monitoring, observability, and operational support for production automations and AI systems (telemetry, incident response, and performance)
• Experience with performance tuning and cost optimisation across automation, integrations, and AI services
• Ability to evaluate new technologies, patterns, and tools across Power Platform, Copilot Studio, Azure AI, and the data platform ecosystem to guide technical strategy

At Sword, our core values and culture are based on caring about our people, investing in training and career development, and building inclusive teams where we are all encouraged to contribute to achieve success. We offer comprehensive benefits designed to support your professional development and enhance your overall quality of life.  In addition to a Competitive Salary, here's what you can expect as part of our benefits package: 

• Personalised Career Development: We create a development plan customised to your goals and aspirations, with a range of learning and development opportunities within a culture that encourages growth. 
• Flexible working: Flexible work arrangements to support your work-life balance.  We can’t promise to always be able to meet every request, however, are keen to discuss your individual preferences to make it work where we can. 
• A Fantastic Benefits Package: This includes generous annual leave allowance, enhanced family friendly benefits, pension scheme, access to private health, well-being, and insurance schemes.

At Sword we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer, ensuring that all applicants receive fair and equal consideration for employment, regardless of whether they meet every requirement. If you don’t tick all the boxes but feel you have some of the relevant skills and experience we’re looking for, please do consider applying and highlight your transferable skills and experience. We embrace diversity in all its forms, valuing individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Your perspective and potential are important to us. 

If we can do anything to help make the hiring process more accessible, please let our talent acquisition team know when you apply so we can support any adjustments.