Why this opportunity stands out
Lead the engineering behind enterprise agentic AI systems for a Milan-based financial services group. Permanent, hybrid working in Milan, salary at local market rates.
About the role
167 Solutions is recruiting an AI Solution Engineering Lead for a Milan-based financial services group.
This is a leadership role with hands-on technical ownership. Our client is building enterprise agentic AI - systems that do real work across the business, not chat interfaces wrapped around a model. The lead owns the solution engineering practice: how agentic systems are designed, built, evaluated and put into production safely in a regulated environment.
The team sits at the centre of the business, working directly with finance, risk, operations and product. The work is solving genuine operational problems - automating reconciliation and reporting, agentic document and case processing, decision support for relationship managers, and internal tools that give colleagues back their time.
The role is based in Milan with hybrid working, and the salary is set at local market rates for the Milan area. For someone who has shipped agentic AI into production and wants to lead the engineering behind it, this is a significant step up.
Key responsibilities
• Lead the build and delivery of production agentic systems, working hands-on with engineers rather than purely at the architecture level.
• Design the evaluation and observability approach: how agent behaviour is measured, how regressions are caught, and how a system is trusted once it is live in a regulated business.
• Work directly with finance, risk and operations stakeholders to frame problems properly and turn them into technical solutions that hold up in production.
• Shape the roadmap for agentic capability, and advise the business on where it is worth applying AI and where it is not.
• Establish engineering standards for AI delivery - versioning, testing, prompt and tool management, human review, auditability.
• Manage and mentor a small team of AI engineers, and raise the standard of AI practice around them.
• Work with risk, compliance and legal to make sure systems are explainable and appropriately controlled from the start.
• Represent the client with technology and business stakeholders, in English and in Italian.
What they're looking for
• Deep hands-on experience with agentic AI - LLM agents, tool use, planning, retrieval, memory, and the failure modes that come with them.
• Strong engineering judgement: you know when a model is the wrong tool for the job, and when a deterministic system is the right answer.
• Experience evaluating and monitoring AI systems in production, and building the guardrails that make them safe to run.
• Fluency with the modern stack - Python, orchestration frameworks, retrieval infrastructure, vector stores, and evaluation tooling.
• Confidence working in a regulated business, and the judgement to build explainable, auditable systems.
• Genuine stakeholder skills, and the ability to hold a technical conversation with senior business and risk people.
• Professional working Italian and English. English-only applicants will not be suitable for this role.
• Based in Milan or able to relocate, with hybrid working on site.
Benefits
• Hybrid working, based in Milan.
• The chance to lead the agentic AI practice in a financial services business, rather than work on the side of one.
• Enterprise problems worth solving - finance, risk and operations, with real users and real consequences.
• A small, senior team with visible ownership and no layers between you and the work.
• The autonomy to shape how agentic systems are engineered, not just to build within someone else's framework.
• Private health cover, pension contribution and a flexible working rhythm.