AI Technical Lead

About us

Birketts is a full service, UK Top 50 law firm. With a heritage spanning 160 years, we have more than 700 lawyers and legal professionals and over 600 staff based in Bristol, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich, London, Norwich and Sevenoaks. We advise businesses, government and public sector organisations and individuals in the UK and internationally across four principal practice groups: Real Estate, Corporate Services, Dispute Resolution and Private Client.

We are defined by our Next Level Law proposition. We work with our clients as a proactive partner, horizon scanning and thinking ahead to the changes, challenges or opportunities that they may face.

Next Level Law is also applied to our people. Our collegiate culture means everyone is encouraged to achieve their next level in everything they do. RollOnFriday recently ranked us as the 6th best law firm to work at in 2026.

With our ambition to succeed, comes a strong desire to make a positive contribution to the communities we serve, and we are committed to delivering the objectives set out in our ESG strategy. Diversity plays an integral part in all that we do, with female partners comprising 42% of our partnership.

The team you will join

The AI capability sits within Birketts' Information Technology function, working closely with Product Development, Knowledge Management, Learning & Development, Security and Risk & Compliance. Delivery will be product-led and iterative, with a small cross-functional working group using matrixed resources across teams.

The role will operate within Birketts' core ecosystem, including Microsoft 365 (Copilot), iManage (Document Management), Aderant Expert (Practice Management), Intapp Intake (new client onboarding) and Microsoft Fabric (data platform). Azure is a likely hosting platform for any future 'Birketts-approved AI environment', subject to requirements and build vs buy decisions.

The work you will be doing

As AI Technical Lead, you will be a hands-on technical leader within Birketts' IT team, working in close partnership with the Product Manager for AI. Your focus will be to turn early AI usage into safe, repeatable and supported capabilities-starting with productising M365 Copilot and Copilot Agents in priority workflows (document drafting/review and knowledge workflows in selected practice areas) and delivering practical integrations into Birketts' existing systems. This is a hands-on role: alongside shaping standards and enablement, you will write and ship code where needed to deliver small integrations, automations and repeatable AI-enabled workflows.

This role is delivery-oriented: you will design, build and ship incremental improvements, partnering with colleagues across Development, Data, Security, Knowledge Management and Learning & Development to drive adoption, skills sharing and effective change management. You will also support evidence-based build vs buy decisions on specialist third-party legal tools and any future 'Birketts-approved AI environment'. Platform architecture and security governance will be delivered in collaboration with Birketts' wider Technology and Information Security leadership.

You will be supported by matrixed colleagues in Development, Data and Security; this role leads hands-on delivery of priority items rather than owning all engineering capacity.

Please note that this job profile is not an exhaustive list of duties but merely an outline of the key components of the role. You may be required by your line manager to take on additional responsibilities when requested.

What we are looking for

This role is well suited to a hands-on technical lead who enjoys building and improving products in partnership with product management and users. You will be able to translate business needs into secure, auditable and integrated solutions, and you will be comfortable delivering in a matrixed model, bringing others along through coaching, documentation and shared patterns. You will be comfortable coding as part of delivery, not only producing guidance and patterns.

Essential experience and skills

• Proven experience delivering production-grade software, workflow or automation solutions in an enterprise environment, with hands-on build and delivery responsibility
• Strong experience integrating systems and data sources into coherent workflows (API-led integration, events and/or data pipelines)
• Hands-on software development capability, with proficiency in at least one mainstream language used for enterprise API integration and automation (e.g., C#/.NET, Python); able to design, build, test and release small services/integrations
• Practical experience delivering AI-assisted workflow features into production, including validation/testing and monitoring
• Understanding of common AI delivery patterns and controls
• Good cloud experience (preferably Azure) and understanding of secure delivery practices (identity, access control, audit logging, monitoring and operational readiness)
• Working knowledge of modern engineering practices (Git, code review, CI/CD basics, and operational readiness such as logging/monitoring)
• Experience working with security/governance stakeholders to apply controls in delivery (confidentiality, auditability and least privilege)
• Experience delivering through an agile product lifecycle with measurable outcomes (discovery, pilots, iteration, adoption/value tracking)
• Ability to apply pragmatic quality and evaluation approaches to AI-assisted features (testing/validation, guardrails, release gating and user feedback loops)
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions and trade-offs to non-technical audiences and to support adoption

Desirable experience

• Experience in legal or other regulated/professional services environments where confidentiality and auditability are critical
• Experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Agents and/or Microsoft-aligned automation
• Familiarity with one or more of: iManage, Aderant Expert, Intapp Intake, Microsoft Fabric or similar platforms
• Experience building integrations with document/content platforms or line-of-business systems (e.g., DMS, intake, practice management, or data platforms)
• Exposure to Azure AI services (including Azure OpenAI/Azure AI) and/or delivering AI-assisted workflow features in production
• Experience evaluating and piloting third-party AI tools (security posture, integration approach, operating model) and supporting build vs buy recommendations

Hybrid Working