Tech Partner, AI Native Engineering Lead

About the role

Welcome to Haleon. We’re a purpose-driven, world-class consumer company putting everyday health in the hands of millions. In just three years since our launch, we’ve grown, evolved and are now entering an exciting new chapter – one filled with bold ambitions and enormous opportunity. Our trusted portfolio of brands – including Sensodyne®, Panadol®, Advil®, Voltaren®, Theraflu®, Otrivin®, and Centrum® – lead in resilient and growing categories. What sets us apart is our unique blend of deep human understanding and trusted science. Now it’s time to fully realise the full potential of our business and our people. We do this through our Win as One strategy. It puts our purpose – to deliver better everyday health with humanity – at the heart of everything we do. It unites us, inspires us, and challenges us to be better every day, driven by our agile, performance-focused culture.

Job Purpose: Build Haleon China’s AI-native engineering capability to accelerate China Digital Acceleration, support the new operating model, and turn AI from individual productivity into enterprise-scale delivery capability. This founding role will establish hands-on AI engineering standards, reusable agent and automation frameworks, and practical governance for secure, scalable, China-fit software delivery. The role partners closely with Tech BPs, Architecture, Security, Data & AI, product teams and business functions to reduce over-reliance on external vendors, modernise local applications, and embed AI into high-value business processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead the AI-native engineering strategy, standards and developer productivity roadmap for China D&T, translating China Digital Acceleration and the new operating model into practical engineering capabilities.
• Drive hands-on adoption of AI coding and engineering tools with clear guardrails for security, privacy and quality.
• Build internal engineering capability and reusable assets — including RAG, MCP, agent frameworks, workflow orchestration, API integration patterns and reference components — to simplify application architecture.
• Establish AI-driven SDLC governance covering solution design, code review, automated testing, documentation, release management, vulnerability remediation and AI/security assessment.
• Partner with business functions and Tech BPs to redesign end-to-end processes using AI, automation and data, focusing on measurable business value, adoption and sustainable ways of working.
• Work with Architecture, Cloud, Data and Security teams to ensure solutions are aligned with China reference architecture, Alibaba Cloud/Azure hybrid strategy and Responsible AI requirements.
• Modernize China local applications and shared platforms using modular, composable and API-first patterns.
• Define and track engineering productivity and AI adoption KPIs, including cycle time, AI-assisted development usage, reusable asset adoption, cost avoidance, quality, risk reduction and vendor dependency reduction.
• Coach engineers, product teams and vendors, build an AI engineering community of practice, and influence senior stakeholders with clear trade-offs across value, speed, cost, risk and compliance.

Requirements

Educational Background: Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science, Engineering or a related discipline. An advanced degree or equivalent practical experience in AI, software architecture, cloud engineering or digital product development is preferred.

Job-Related Experience:

• 5+ years of professional experience in software engineering, solution architecture, platform engineering, AI engineering, product engineering or a closely related role.
• Strong hands-on engineering capability with practical experience building production-grade applications, integrations, automations or AI-enabled solutions.
• Proven experience with LLMs, agentic AI patterns, RAG, vector databases, workflow orchestration, tool/function calling, API integration and enterprise knowledge solutions.
• Solid understanding of cloud-native architecture, DevOps/CI-CD, automated testing, observability, release management and secure software delivery.
• Experience establishing engineering standards, reusable frameworks, developer enablement and governance in a complex enterprise environment.
• Experience working with internal teams and external vendors, with the ability to shift delivery from vendor-led execution to reusable internal capability.
• Exposure to China digital ecosystem, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent/WeCom, ByteDance/Douyin, local compliance and cross-border data considerations is a strong advantage.
• Experience in FMCG, Consumer Health, Retail or Finance technology domains is preferred.
• Track record of coaching engineers, influencing senior stakeholders and translating technical choices into business value, cost, risk and adoption outcomes.

Skills

• Hands-on development skills in Python and/or TypeScript; practical use of AI coding.
• Strong knowledge of prompt engineering, agent design, RAG, vector search, evaluation, guardrails, Responsible AI and AI security practices.
• Familiarity with enterprise integration, API management, workflow orchestration, MCP/tool integration, cloud platforms, observability and security scanning.
• Strong product mindset with the ability to build reusable capabilities rather than one-off solutions.
• Commercial acumen and ability to connect engineering investment to growth, productivity, resilience and measurable value.
• Excellent communication in English and Chinese; able to simplify complex technical topics for senior business and global stakeholders.
• Strong stakeholder management, consulting mindset and ability to operate in ambiguity while keeping clear decision rights, priorities and delivery discipline.
• Passion for team capability building, coaching and creating a modern engineering culture within Digital & Tech.