Distinguished Engineer – AI & Data Science

Distinguished Engineer – AI & Data Science

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Glasgow

Description

Encompass enables fast, accurate identity validation and verification of corporate customers, and a gold standard approach to KYC. Our award-winning corporate digital identity (CDI) platform incorporates real-time data and documents from authoritative global public data sources and private customer information, to create and maintain digital risk profiles.

Utilizing the expertise of a global transformation team of KYC and banking industry experts, as well as strategic data, technology and consulting partnerships, enables seamless integration of Encompass into existing workflows and systems. With Encompass the world’s leading banks improve customer experience and increase business opportunities through consistent regulatory compliance and risk mitigation. 

With offices in Amsterdam, Glasgow, London, New York, and Sydney, we are a rapidly growing international company offering a chance to be part of our success – read on if you think you’re up for the challenge

About the role

We are seeking a visionary and technically hands-on Distinguished Engineer to define and execute our AI and data science strategy. You’ll work at the intersection of AI research and product engineering to build intelligent, trustworthy systems that transform how financial institutions meet compliance and regulatory obligations. 
This is a leadership role that requires deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and the ability to build and grow a high-performing key area of the business. 

Key Responsibilities 

Strategic Leadership 

• Define and lead the AI and data science strategy across Encompass products, aligned with our vision for intelligent KYC automation.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Executive teams to identify opportunities for AI-driven innovation, especially around data acquisition and reasoning.

Agentic AI Development 

• Architect and lead the development of a cutting-edge agentic AI system for intelligent data discovery, extraction, and decision-making.
• Oversee the integration of LLMs, knowledge graphs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and reinforcement learning for autonomous task execution.
• Champion the application of explainable and trustworthy AI principles in all solutions.

Hands-on Technical Leadership 

• Serve as a player-coach—writing code, prototyping models, conducting experiments, and reviewing designs.
• Establish best practices for data science, MLOps, and model deployment at scale.
• Guide the selection of AI technologies, platforms, and tooling.

Team Building & Mentorship  

• Mentor team members and the broader business, fostering a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and continuous learning.

Collaboration & Communication 

• Communicate complex technical concepts to business stakeholders and influence product strategy.
• Represent Encompass in thought leadership forums and industry discussions on AI in RegTech and compliance.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Lets get the technical stuff out the way first, your past experience as an Engineer will include working with:

• Proven experience in data science, AI, or ML roles with increasing leadership responsibility (people management experience not required).
• Deep expertise in building intelligent systems with one or more of the following: LLMs, agent frameworks, RAG, knowledge representation, or autonomous data pipelines.
• Strong programming and software engineering skills (Python preferred; familiarity with cloud-native and MLOps tools).
• Demonstrated experience in building and deploying AI systems in production environments.
• Strong understanding of data governance, bias, fairness, and regulatory considerations in AI.
• Experience in the financial services, RegTech, or compliance domain is a strong plus.
• Advanced degree (PhD or MSc) in Computer Science, Data Science, AI, or a related field.

Cultural add is as equally as important to us a technical skills, our teams are full of people who: 

• Think in terms of a 3-5 year future time horizon, helping others to see what’s down the road, and what the implications are for now.
• Support hiring our most senior engineering people.
• Care about, and is involved in the wider business strategy; doesn’t just have a pure engineering focus. Ideally the person would also be able to contribute directly to the business strategy.
• Able to provide actionable direction to teams of multiple stakeholders even in the most challenging of situations.
• Effective at creating and getting buy in for a multi-year technology strategy across the company, from Board level to individual engineers.
• Able to make and communicate difficult decisions when necessary.
• Lead by example to proactively foster an inclusive, diverse, and positive engineering culture across the business.

Equal Opportunities
We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and empowered to thrive. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic.

If you require any adjustments during the recruitment process to ensure an equitable experience, please let us know.

Join us in creating an environment where everyone can contribute their best work.

*Please note, we are not looking for agency assistance on these roles and will not accept any speculative CVs shared. 

We offer a rewarding and challenging place to work, a transparent and collaborative culture and a well rounded benefits package. Below are some of what we currently offer:

• Participation in our industry leading share options scheme
• Private Medical Plan
• 20 days a year Work From Anywhere policy for all staff
• Flexible-first working policy
• Enhanced annual, personal and parental leave schemes.
• Paid volunteering leave programme
• Employer recognition and employee assistance programmes