AI Operations Lead
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 14, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 24, 2026.
Remote, UK
Salary: up to £60,000 per year
Are you looking for an AI Operations Lead role in a fast-growing business where people are at the heart of everything we do?
Would you like to work within a socially conscious organisation that is making a real impact in the education sector?
The Company
The Key Group serves school leaders and trusts across the UK providing authoritative guidance and intuitive tools that support school leadership.
We work across the full diversity of schools and locations, from small rural and coastal primaries to the largest trusts and local authorities in the country.
We recognise that each school and trust is on a journey and school leaders need to identify their specific context, their own path and the next step in that journey. This process requires more than just shared values in a school, it requires the knowledge, data, context and confidence to bring others with you in effecting change.
That's why we're here. We put the power back in the hands of those leading our schools and trusts, by equipping them with remarkable products & services. The Key Group is home to 5 brands, each the leading provider in its category including Arbor, ScholarPack, Integris, The Key and GovernorHub. Nearly 600 colleagues deliver our award-winning services and serve 19,000 schools.
The role
At The Key Group, we are accelerating our digital transformation by embedding enterprise AI into the heart of our operations. We are seeking an AI Operations Lead to act as the central operational hub for our enterprise AI platforms, gateway administration, workflow automation and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations.
Rather than a pure software development role, this position balances operational agility with strict governance. You will bridge technical engineering, risk functions, and end-users-ensuring our AI technologies deliver safe, cost-effective and measurable value across the enterprise.
Key Responsibilities
- AI Gateway & Platform Administration: Oversee the daily operations of our AI gateway (e.g., LiteLLM), managing model routing, rate limits, cataloguing, fallback pathways and access permissions across third-party models like Anthropic and Amazon Bedrock.
- Workflow Automation & Optimisation: Build and maintain low-code automations (e.g. n8n) integrating enterprise applications with approved AI services, converting manual processes into secure, auditable, human-in-the-loop workflows.
- AI Agent & MCP Integration: Configure, test and deploy AI agents and MCP connections. Enforce least-privilege access across agent knowledge bases while monitoring production behaviour to ensure security and prevent hallucinations.
- Governance, Risk & Compliance: Enforce AI governance policies across all models, agents and workflows. Maintain full audit trails and support legal, risk and privacy teams with AI impact assessments and data residency checks.
- Monitoring, Reporting & Cost Control: Track token consumption, API spend and usage budgets across external providers. Implement quotas and alert thresholds to ensure usage remains optimized and within budget.
- Service Operations & Support: Serve as the primary point of contact for access requests, incidents and operational changes. Maintain runbooks, manage vendor SLAs and resolve platform issues swiftly.
- Enablement & Community: Onboard and upskill internal teams on prompt structure and responsible AI tools, fostering a company-wide Community of Practice.
Requirements
The ideal person
- Proven track record in technology operations, platform administration, application support or service management.
- Hands-on experience administering AI platforms/gateways (e.g. LiteLLM) or SaaS automation tools (e.g. n8n, Make, Power Automate).
- Solid understanding of REST APIs, webhooks, JSON structures, RBAC and secret management.
- Familiarity with cloud AI providers (Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic) and core GenAI concepts (tokens, context windows, embeddings).
- Strong incident management, system documentation and operational control experience.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to bridge technical concepts and business needs.
Nice to have
- Experience in ITIL-aligned or highly regulated, security-sensitive environments.
- Exposure to Model Context Protocol (MCP), LLM observability tools (e.g. Langfuse, Datadog) or AWS infrastructure.
- Basic Python or JavaScript scripting capabilities for troubleshooting and data mapping.
- Awareness of AI governance frameworks (e.g., ISO/IEC 42001, NIST AI RMF) or info-sec standards (ISO 27001, SOC 2).
- Relevant AWS Cloud or AI Governance certifications.
If you don’t meet all of the above but have a genuine interest in joining our team please get in touch - we’d be very happy to chat.
Benefits
Why work for us
You will play a pivotal role in shaping how AI is safely and effectively operated across our organisation. This individual contributor role offers broad organisational reach, allowing you to drive key process automation projects, manage vendor relationships and lead an internal culture of AI adoption.
We place huge importance on caring for and developing our people. If you join us you can expect a good work-life balance and the training and support you need to succeed in your role and continue to progress. We are a socially conscious company, but one that also likes to have fun. We offer a generous holiday allowance, flexible hours, buying and selling holiday, enhanced maternity pay, free breakfast, fruit, and drinks, regular socials and much more.