Rollsroyce
AI Product Lead
Salary
Job description
Job Description
AI Product Lead
Derby/ Hybrid
Full time
Why join Rolls-Royce?
At Rolls-Royce we are proud to be a business that has truly helped to shape the modern world and are committed to always being a force for progress; powering, protecting and connecting people everywhere.
By joining Rolls-Royce, you'll have the opportunity to work on world-class solutions, supported by a culture that believes individuality is our greatest strength, and all perspectives, experiences and backgrounds help us innovate and enable our high-performance culture.
Position Summary
We have an exciting opportunity for an AI Product Lead to join our team in Derby.
In this role you will maximise the value delivered to customers and stakeholders by defining, owning and evolving the AI product vision and roadmap. Lead the identification, shaping
and prioritisation of AI-enabled opportunities that align with business strategy and deliver measurable value. Provide clear direction across the AI product portfolio, ensuring alignment between business goals, technology strategy, and delivery execution. Create and maintain a prioritised portfolio and backlog of AI initiatives, enabling teams to deliver high-quality, scalable, and responsible AI products incrementally.
What you will be doing:
- Identify, shape, and prioritise AI product opportunities with senior business leaders, customers and technology stakeholders to deliver strategic value.
- Own the AI product portfolio and roadmap, ensuring prioritisation reflects business outcomes, customer value, risk and return on investment.
- Provide product leadership across AI initiatives by setting clear vision, objectives and success measures for AI products and platforms.
- Ensure AI product backlogs are clearly defined and prioritised, incorporating functional, non-functional, ethical, safety and regulatory requirements.
- Work with delivery teams to ensure high-quality outcomes each sprint, providing business, data and architectural context as required.
- Sponsor and support agile ways of working across AI delivery teams, promoting continuous improvement, and learning.
Position Qualifications:
Education & Professional Background
- Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) in a relevant field such as Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, or a related STEM discipline.
- Postgraduate qualification (MSc, MBA) in Data/AI, Product Management, Systems Engineering, or Technology Management is advantageous but not essential.
- Formal training or certification in Product Management, Agile / Scrum, SAFe, or Lean Product Development is desirable.
Core Product Leadership Experience
- Experience in product management, product ownership, or product leadership roles, with direct accountability for product vision, roadmap, and value delivery.
- Demonstrable experience leading complex digital or AI-enabled products from discovery through to scaled delivery and adoption.
- Proven ability to define and evolve product strategy aligned to enterprise objectives, balancing customer value, commercial return, risk, and delivery capacity.
- Experience operating at portfolio level, prioritising multiple initiatives and managing trade-offs across investment, risk, and strategic impact.
AI, Data & Technology Experience
- Strong working knowledge of AI / ML concepts (e.g. predictive models, optimisation, NLP, computer vision, generative AI) sufficient to make informed product and prioritisation decisions.
- Experience working closely with data scientists, AI engineers, platform teams, and architects, translating business problems into well-scoped AI use cases.
- Understanding of data products, model lifecycle management, MLOps concepts, and AI platform capabilities, even if not hands-on.
- Experience embedding AI into mission‑critical, regulated, or safety‑conscious environments is highly desirable.
Safety, Ethics & Regulatory Awareness (Critical at Rolls‑Royce)
- Strong understanding of AI ethics, safety, and governance, including how non‑functional requirements influence product design and prioritisation.
- Demonstrated experience incorporating safety, assurance, traceability, and regulatory constraints into product backlogs and delivery plans.
- Ability to work within formal AI Product Safety and governance frameworks, ensuring AI solutions are verifiable, auditable, and responsibly deployed.
Regional Benefits:
- Work in a safety-first environment were doing the right thing and keeping it simple are core principles.
- Join a culture that values making a real difference through your work.
- Develop your career as a mid-career professional blending technical expertise with strong personal qualities.
- Thrive in a role that encourages integrity, accountability, resilience, and curiosity.
- Collaborate and build relationships in a team-focused environment while also working independently.
- Take initiative, lead, and make smart decisions with confidence and support.
- Grow through continuous learning, openness to improvement, and exposure to challenging opportunities.
Our vision is to ensure that the excellence and ingenuity that shaped our history continues into our future. Our multi-year transformation programme aims to turn Rolls-Royce into a high-performing, competitive, resilient, and growing company. Join us, and it can be your future vision too.
Rolls-Royce are committed to being a respectful, inclusive, and non-discriminatory workplace where individuality is valued, diverse perspectives fuel innovation, and everyone can thrive.
Grade: Level C
Closing Date: 14/04/2026
For further information, please contact: aaron.thoresendavidson@rolls-royce.com