Team Lead – AI & Automation in Barcelona

We are seeking an experienced AI Development Team Lead to develop, guide, and expand our AI & Automation engineering function within our mobile game development environment. As a Team Lead at Aristocrat, you will have an outstanding opportunity to build the AI capability of a top mobile gaming studio and directly impact how AI changes our development methods and live game ecosystems.

You will oversee a committed team of AI engineers in this role, steering the technical vision, delivering projects, and maintaining operational excellence for AI systems on Unity-based clients and cloud-native backends. Your responsibility includes converting AI strategies into scalable, production-ready solutions that refine game development workflows, improve GameOps efficiency, and enrich player experiences. This position merges strong technical leadership, staff management, collaboration across functions, and hands-on architectural guidance. If advancing AI innovation in gaming excites you, this role is a great fit!

What You'll Do

• Lead, guide, and develop a high-performing AI & Automation engineering team, including solution architects and AI engineers.
• Own the end-to-end delivery of AI initiatives from concept to production deployment.
• Define team objectives, goals and milestones, and delivery roadmaps aligned with business and product strategy.
• Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and engineering excellence.
• Provide technical mentoring and career development support to team members.
• Define and evolve the AI technical strategy across backend services and Unity client integrations.
• Deliver architectural supervision for AI-enabled microservices, automation frameworks, and ML pipelines constructed on Google Cloud.
• Ensure scalable, secure, and maintainable AI solutions aligned with cloud-native and event-driven architectural principles.
• Coordinate model lifecycle management, including training, deployment, monitoring, and optimization.
• Drive guidelines in AI governance, model performance monitoring, and responsible AI implementation.
• Identify high-impact AI opportunities across game development, GameOps or equivalent experience, LiveOps, and player engagement.
• Guide the development of machine learning models, predictive analytics systems, tools powered by large language models, and automation frameworks.
• Ensure seamless integration of AI tools, APIs, and services into Unity-based game architectures and backend ecosystems.

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, with substantial experience in systems powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• At least 2 years' experience guiding or supervising engineering teams.
• Solid experience in cloud-native architectures, ideally on Google Cloud (GCP).
• Experience crafting and deploying AI-powered microservices and automation frameworks.
• Solid understanding of event-driven systems, message brokers (Kafka, Pub/Sub, RabbitMQ), and asynchronous architectures.
• Experience with ML lifecycle management, MLOps practices, and model deployment in production environments.
• Proficiency in backend and AI-related programming languages (e.g., Python, C#, Go, JavaScript).
• Experience working in Agile development environments (SCRUM/Kanban).
• Strong leadership, communication, and collaborator management skills.
• Ability to balance hands-on technical involvement with strategic leadership responsibilities.

Nice to Have

• Experience in the gaming sector or a strong enthusiasm for game creation.
• Familiarity with Unity workflows and client-server integrations.
• Expertise in AI/ML frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, OpenAI, or similar).
• Experience implementing LLM-based tools, generative AI solutions, or advanced analytics in production.
• Experience building internal AI platforms or developer efficiency tooling.

Why Aristocrat?

Aristocrat is a world leader in gaming content and technology, and a top-tier publisher of free-to-play mobile games. We deliver great performance for our B2B customers and bring joy to the lives of the millions of people who love to play our casino and mobile games. And while we focus on fun, we never forget our responsibilities. We strive to lead the way in responsible gameplay, and to lift the bar in company governance, employee wellbeing and sustainability. We’re a diverse business united by shared values and an inspiring mission to bring joy to life through the power of play.

We aim to create an environment where individual differences are valued, and all employees have the opportunity to realize their potential. We welcome and encourage applications from all people regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, cultural background, disability status or LGBTQ+ identity. EEO M/F/D/V

• World Leader in Gaming Entertainment

• Robust benefits package

• Global career opportunities

Perks

- Health insurance - CIGNA
- Gympass gold plan
- 25 vacation days + 1 day on your birthday
- Flexible payment - daycare, transport, etc
- Pension plan 1% base salary
- Food at the office twice a week

So, what’s stopping you?

Our Values

• People First

  We have the deepest respect for our people and their well being. We know they are exceptionally talented and will always have a choice. We want them to re-choose us every day. We are committed to building a culture where each person's voice will always be heard and addressed.

• MAD for More

  Always improving, innovating and never settling for the existing. We push all boundaries with courage and ambition to become the world’s best games company.

• Champion Together
  We excel at what we do but yet remain humble and helpful to our teammates. We champion one another and hold each other to high standards without any egos.

• Globally Inclusive

  We are all Equal - regardless of the language we speak, where we live, our gender, religion or culture we come from. We want to build a global home, where everyone has the equal opportunity to make an impact.

• Customer Focused

  We always think from the customer's perspective - be it players or internal customers.

  Improving their experience and joy is what drives us. Every client's success is our big win!

Travel Expectations: None

Additional Information

At this time, we are unable to sponsor work visas for this position. Candidates must be authorized to work in the job posting location for this position on a full-time basis without the need for current or future visa sponsorship.