AI Factory Lead Architect

Position Overview The AI Factory Lead Architect will lead Advania UK's internal AI Factory, turning high-value business opportunities into impactful AI solutions using Microsoft technologies, including Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry and Azure AI. This hands-on role combines technical leadership with stakeholder engagement, requiring the ability to design, build and deliver AI applications, agents and automations that drive measurable business outcomes. You will define the architecture, standards and governance for Advania's AI estate, lead a small team of AI engineers, and ensure solutions are secure, scalable and supportable. Working closely with business leaders, the CTO and CIO, you'll help accelerate Advania's AI transformation while enabling a wider community of AI innovators across the organisation. Salary \& Benefits The budgeted salary for this role is up to £90,000 year, depending on experience. Click here for the list of benefits. Hybrid working We recognise the benefits that remote and flexible working brings. We operate a hybrid working policy that allows our employees to balance time in the office and time from home. Each team within our organisation can decide how to implement this policy. If you have any questions after applying, please reach out to our recruitment team. Responsibilities * Design and build AI applications, agents, automations and dashboards, selecting the right pattern for each business challenge - agentic, retrieval-based, workflow, or conventional automation * Own the end-to-end architecture of the internal AI estate – reference architectures, environment and tenant strategy, security, cost management, observability, and the DevOps and source control processes which support it * Run discovery and shaping sessions with business stakeholders and process owners – translating stated needs into well-defined, feasible use cases with a clear value hypothesis, success measures and adoption plan * Provide day-to-day technical direction to the team – setting the approach, reviewing designs and code, pairing where useful, and developing their skills across both pro-code and low-code disciplines * Implement Microsoft-specific technical governance – in Copilot Studio, Power Platform, Azure DevOps, and our Azure subscriptions used for hosting * Define and run the support model for the AI estate – monitoring and alerting, incident response, change and release management, documentation and knowledge transfer, so solutions remain reliable as usage grows * Enable the wider maker community – publish agent templates, blueprints, coding and prompt standards, approved datasets and tools, and provide a clear path from citizen-built prototype to governed, supported solution * Contribute to prioritisation of the use case portfolio – sizing effort, assessing technical feasibility and reuse potential, and advising senior leaders on sequencing by value density * Report progress, delivery and technical risk clearly to the CTO and senior stakeholders, and present the work of the team to executive audiences * Maintain an active view of the evolving Microsoft AI roadmap and the wider AI landscape, and bring relevant advances into our internal estate – sharing learning with client-facing AI colleagues What Success Looks Like * A steady flow of AI solutions moving from idea to production, with benefits evidenced against an agreed baseline rather than assumed * Solutions that are genuinely adopted and trusted by the business - used daily, and relied upon by the teams they were built for * Governance that is real but proportionate - makers across the business can move quickly, safely and within known guardrails * A supportable estate: solutions are monitored, maintained and improved after launch, with clear ownership and response expectations * Senior stakeholders across the business who see the AI Factory as the natural route to solving their problems with AI Qualification \& Experience * Demonstrable experience designing and delivering AI solutions into production, not just POCs * Strong agent building experience in Copilot Studio (both harnesses) and Microsoft Foundry – implementing complex reasoning via instructions and skills, choosing models appropriately, orchestration, connecting to data sources, tool calling, and working with evaluations and monitoring to ensure agent success * Solid software engineering foundations, with a background in web app and API development - a modern language such as Python, C# or TypeScript, integration design, source control, CI/CD (ideally Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions), testing and infrastructure as code - backed by strong awareness of the related Azure platform services * Experience in MCP (Model Context Protocol) development - building and consuming MCP servers to expose internal systems and data to agents securely * Practical knowledge of RAG, ideally with experience of Azure AI Search * An understanding of Copilot Studio and Power Platform governance fundamentals * Fluent use of agentic coding tools such as GitHub Copilot * The credibility to work directly with senior leaders - translating between business language and technical options, challenging constructively, and presenting clearly Desirable * Solution-level architecture ownership combined with technical leadership of a small team * Experience in a technology services provider, MSP or consultancy environment, and an understanding of how AI can improve commercial performance * Broader Power Platform depth - Power Apps, Power Automate and Dataverse * Microsoft Purview and information protection concepts as they apply to AI - sensitivity labelling, oversharing remediation and data lifecycle * AB-620: Designing and Building Integrated AI Agent Solutions in Copilot Studio * AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect * AI-901: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals About Us We are the tech company with people at heart. At Advania, we believe in empowering people to create sustainable value through the clever use of technology. As one of Microsoft's leading partners in the UK, specialising in Azure, Security, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365, we have a proven track record of success in delivering transformational IT services. Our Selection Process We are committed to ensuring an equitable experience for all candidates, regardless of race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other basis as protected by applicable law. Please do let us know if you’ll need any reasonable adjustments as part of the selection process by highlighting these on your application form. As part of our commitment to our clients we will need to carry out background checks, including a criminal record check, for all offers of employment. If you have any unspent criminal convictions or questions about the screening process, please notify your recruiter once the application has been submitted. We are the tech company with people at heart. Tech is created for people. Our services impact every part of life. We are passionate about understanding your issues, your business, your needs. Our business is built around understanding people, and our employees are empowered to act on this understanding every day.