Digital - Data, Analytics and AI Manager (AI Specialism)

Ideas | People | Trust

We’re BDO. An accountancy and business advisory firm, providing the advice and solutions businesses need to navigate today’s changing world.

Our clients are Britain’s economic engine – ambitious, entrepreneurially-spirited and high‑growth businesses that fuel the economy - and the owners and management teams that lead them.

We’ll broaden your horizons

Our Digital & Risk Advisory Services (DRAS) are designed to enable organisations to leverage our innovative methodologies, technology, and highly experienced professionals to manage their business risks most effectively. Working at BDO offers curious-minded people excellent exposure to all aspects of business strategy, operations and more.

We’re a dynamic team of internal auditors, accountants, technology, and business transformation experts with disciplines in finance, risk, projects and change, cyber and digital, amongst others.

Our extensive network and depth of experience mean we work in a highly client-centric way, focused on providing a collaborative, tailor-made advisory service. Our team helps clients manage their business-critical threats, such as cyber events, and build resilient businesses capable of responding to internal and external events which may interrupt their operations. Being known for exceptional client service in our chosen markets, we put innovation and agility at the heart of everything we do.

This is your chance to join a fast-paced, growing team and help shape the future of DRAS at BDO.

We’ll help you succeed

Our clients trust us because of the quality of our advice.  That quality grows from a thorough understanding of their business, and that understanding comes from working closely with clients and building long-lasting relationships.

You’ll be someone who can work pro-actively, managing your own tasks, but you’ll also be confident collaborating with others, communicating regularly with senior managers, Directors, and BDO’s Partners to enable us to serve our clients effectively.  You’ll be encouraged to identify and draw attention to opportunities for enhancing our delivery and providing additional services to our clients.

An AI specialist at Manager level, focused on designing, building and deploying AI solutions. This role is ideal for someone with strong hands-on engineering skills and experience leading AI delivery within consulting or project environments. We are looking for an individual who can translate business requirements into working AI applications, combining generative AI, machine learning, data engineering and system integration as appropriate. The role spans technical discovery and architecture through development, evaluation, deployment and ongoing improvement, with an emphasis on reliable solutions that deliver measurable business value. Alongside hands-on delivery, the role includes ownership of project outcomes, client relationships and team development, supported by strong problem-solving skills and a practical, commercially aware approach. 

Responsibilities

• Lead technical discovery and solution design, translating business needs into prioritised AI use cases, architectures, delivery plans and measurable acceptance criteria. 

• Design and build AI applications, including generative AI assistants, retrieval-augmented generation, agent-based workflows and machine learning solutions, selecting approaches that fit the problem rather than the technology. 

• Develop the data pipelines, APIs and integrations needed to connect AI solutions to client systems, and lead deployment using sound software engineering, version control and automated delivery practices. 

• Define and implement evaluation, testing and monitoring for accuracy, reliability, security, latency and cost, embedding access controls, human oversight and appropriate responsible AI safeguards. 

• Manage project scope, budgets, resources, dependencies and technical risks, working with clients and multidisciplinary teams to take solutions from prototype to production, handover and ongoing improvement. 

• Provide hands-on technical leadership, coach team members and review code and solution designs, while contributing to proposals, delivery estimates and reusable AI components and delivery approaches. 

Requirements

• Practical experience building generative AI applications using large language models, prompt design, embeddings, vector search and retrieval-augmented generation, with an understanding of agent-based workflows and their limitations. 

• Hands-on experience developing LLM and generative AI applications using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph or equivalent orchestration frameworks, including retrieval-augmented generation and agentic workflows. 

• Practical experience with enterprise AI platforms such as Microsoft Foundry (Azure AI Foundry), Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock or equivalent cloud AI services, taking solutions from experimentation through to production deployment. 

• Strong understanding of traditional machine learning alongside generative AI, with practical experience in supervised and unsupervised learning and algorithms/frameworks such as XGBoost, scikit-learn or equivalent. 

• Experience implementing RAG architectures using embeddings, vector databases/search technologies and enterprise data sources, with an understanding of retrieval quality, chunking, grounding and relevance. 

• Experience designing and implementing evaluation frameworks for AI solutions, including model/LLM quality, accuracy, groundedness, hallucination, latency, token consumption and cost, together with appropriate monitoring in production. 

• Strong AI engineering fundamentals including Python, APIs, containerisation, Git, automated testing and CI/CD, with experience integrating AI applications into enterprise systems and data platforms. 

• Experience evaluating and monitoring AI outputs, using representative test datasets and clear performance criteria, with practical understanding of machine learning principles, model limitations, privacy, security and responsible AI controls. 

• Experience managing AI or software delivery engagements and teams, taking ownership of scope, budgets, resources, timelines, technical risks and delivery quality. 

• Experience providing hands-on technical leadership, coaching developers and data specialists, reviewing code and architecture, and contributing to proposals, delivery estimates and reusable technical assets.

At BDO, we’ll help you achieve your personal goals and career ambitions, and we have programmes, resources, and frameworks that provide clarity and structure around career development.

We’re in it together

Mutual support and respect is one of BDO’s core values and we’re proud of our distinctive, people-centred culture. From informal success conversations to formal mentoring and coaching, we’ll support you at every stage in your career, whatever your personal and professional needs.

Our agile working framework helps us stay connected, bringing teams together where and when it counts so they can share ideas and help one another. At BDO, you’ll always have access to the people and resources you need to do your best work.

We know that collaboration is the key to creating value for the companies we work with and satisfying experiences for our colleagues, so we’ve invested in state-of-the-art collaboration spaces in our offices. BDO’s people represent a wealth of knowledge and expertise, and we’ll encourage you to build your network, work alongside others, and share your skills and experiences. With a range of multidisciplinary events and dedicated resources, you’ll never stop learning at BDO.

We’re looking forward to the future

At BDO, we help entrepreneurial businesses to succeed, fuelling the UK economy.

Our success is powered by our people, which is why we’re always finding new ways to invest in you. Across the UK thousands of unique minds continue to come together to help companies we work with to achieve their ambitions