Senior Lead - AI Engineer

Job Purpose

The Senior Lead – CAI Delivery Manager leads the BLU Bots pod of Bajaj Finance's Consumer AI programme and acts as deputy to the Delivery Head, including as Officer-in-Charge (OIC) in the Head's absence. The programme builds an AI-first way for customers to discover, compare, buy and service our lending, savings, insurance and consumer-durable financing products on our app and web and inside frontier AI platforms. Building on the Associate Lead role, this role brings deep BFL lending domain knowledge (Gold Loan, Personal Loan and Consumer Durables), owns AI solutioning and delivery for the pod, and shapes how Consumer AI is planned and presented to leadership, including reviews, LRS and AOP.

• Lead, coach and develop a team of three Product & Delivery Managers (GB04); set goals, review performance and build capability.

• Act as deputy to the Delivery Head: run the Consumer AI Delivery team in the Head's absence and take decisions within delegated authority as Officer-in-Charge (OIC).

• Represent Consumer AI Delivery in leadership forums, steering committees and reviews when the Head is unavailable.

• Mentor pod leads and managers across the team; lead hiring and contribute to talent and succession planning.

• Bring deep understanding of BFL lending journeys for Gold Loan, Personal Loan and Consumer Durables: sourcing, eligibility and BRE, KYC / video KYC, bureau checks, underwriting, KFS, e-mandate / NACH, e-sign, disbursal, servicing and collections touchpoints.

• Understand the consumer-durables point-of-sale and dealer / partner model and how EMI financing is offered at purchase.

• Translate domain constraints (regulation, risk policy, operations) into conversational and agentic designs that are both compliant and simple for customers.

• Act as the domain authority for Consumer AI with Lending, Risk, Operations and Compliance teams.

• Contribute to the Consumer AI Long Range Strategy Annual Operating Plan goals, initiatives, business cases, budgets and messaging.

• Create clear, executive-ready presentations and decks for leadership reviews, steering committees, turning delivery detail into crisp messages and decisions.

• Define and track OKRs and outcome metrics for the pod and, as OIC, for the wider team.

• Own the roadmap and backlog for BLU Bots: multimodal chat, the adaptive UI component library, intent understanding and multilingual conversation.

• Drive cross-pod prioritisation with the other pod leads so the shared platform evolves coherently.

• Identify and design AI interventions across lending journeys (agents, retrieval-augmented answers, document and image understanding, recommendations, voice) with feasibility, ROI and risk assessment.

• Lead functional solutioning (journey and process design, BRD / FRD) and guide technical solutioning with architects (integrations, data flows, non-functional requirements, model and vendor choices).

• Own delivery for the pod and support portfolio-level governance across pods: release plans, dependencies, RAID, vendor SOWs and quality gates.

• Ensure every release clears evaluation, UAT, compliance sign-off and rollback readiness.

• Champion responsible AI: grounded answers, locked regulated content (rates, fees, KFS, consent), audit trails and evaluation in production.|• Partner with compliance, risk, legal, information security and grievance teams on RBI digital lending and responsible-AI expectations and the DPDP Act.

• Build trusted relationships with business heads, technology leadership and partners; resolve conflicts and align priorities across functions.

• Manage senior stakeholder expectations on scope, timelines and risk.

• Own pod outcomes (journey completion, conversion, resolution without handoff, customer satisfaction) and cost metrics, including cost per resolved request and AI inference spend.

• Use data, customer feedback and incidents to drive improvement and inform AOP targets.

Key Decisions / Dimensions

• BLU Bots pod roadmap and prioritisation; cross-pod prioritisation recommendations to the Delivery Head.

• Decisions within delegated authority as Officer-in-Charge in the Head's absence.

• Go / No-Go recommendation for releases, based on evaluation, UAT and compliance sign-off.

• Solution approach for lending use cases, together with architecture, risk and compliance.

• Inputs to LRS, AOP, budgets and OKRs; hiring and performance recommendations for the team.

Major Challenges

• Leading the team and making sound decisions as OIC while keeping own pod delivery on track.

• Applying lending regulation and risk policy to AI-driven journeys without making them complex for customers.

• Aligning business, technology, risk and compliance leaders on priorities and trade-offs.

• Turning complex programme detail into clear messages for leadership, LRS and AOP.

Required Qualifications and Experience

Educational Qualifications

• B.E. / B.Tech in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related discipline.

• MBA from a recognised institution (preferred).

Skills

All Associate Lead (GB05) skills, including

• Strong product and delivery management across the full PDLC / SDLC in Agile / Scrum teams.

• Deep working knowledge of AI (LLMs, agents, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation, guardrails) and proven AI use-case design.

• Functional and technical solutioning: process design, BRD / FRD, APIs, integrations, data flows and non-functional requirements.

Lending domain expertise

• Deep knowledge of BFL lending journeys for Gold Loan, Personal Loan and Consumer Durables, from sourcing to servicing.

• Working knowledge of RBI digital lending guidelines, KFS, fair practices, KYC and DPDP requirements.

Leadership & executive communication

• People leadership: managing and developing managers, performance management, hiring and succession.

• Proven ability to act as deputy / Officer-in-Charge and take decisions under delegated authority.

• Executive presentations: building review decks and LRS / AOP messaging for senior leadership.

• Strategic and financial planning: OKRs, business cases, budgets and cost tracking.

• Senior stakeholder management and influence across business, technology, risk and compliance.

• Experience in a lending NBFC or bank leading digital lending or customer-experience programmes.

• Has led an AI, conversational or digital transformation programme at scale.

• Exposure to consumer-durables partner / dealer ecosystems and point-of-sale financing.

• PMP, SAFe or PgMP certification; cloud or AI certification a plus.

a) Work Experience

• 10–12 years in product, program or delivery management, with significant experience in BFSI / lending.

• At least 4 years leading teams (including managers or leads) and at least 2 years with AI / ML or generative-AI products.